Cinderella in a Party Dress
by monroeslittle
Summary: when you're dead, you're dead — except when you're not.
1. Chapter 1

a/n: I'm sorry if I flooded your inbox with four e-mails for this one story. I thought it would be easier on everyone if I split up this story so it wasn't one long, monstrous chapter, and since livejournal made me split it into four chapters, I figured that would work for here, too. :) Also, random question, but do those dividers even work? They seem to disappear and reappear on their own random whims. If it's something I've done, I'm sorry! I hope it isn't too confusing when they magically don't appear. Anyway, title and lyrics come from The Killer's "A Dustland Fairytale." I owe a huge, HUGE thank you to my bestie, Kristen, who not only edited this but also helped me plan it and work through all the plot twists-even when that required laughing as I jumped up and down in excitement and spilled soda all over myself. You're an amazing beta and an even more amazing friend, Kris!

* * *

><p><em>But we persevere, God gives us hope,<em>

_But we still fear what we don't know._

_The mind is poison._

_Castles in the sky sit stranded, vandalized,_

_With drawbridges closing._

_Saw Cinderella in a party dress,_

_But she was looking for a nightgown._

_I saw the devil wrapping up his hands,_

_He's getting ready for the showdown._

* * *

><p>Rachel dies on prom night.<p>

The limo slams on the brakes, and Quinn actually slides along the seat. "We're not there already, are we?" Finn asks, worried. Quinn says no, they can't possibly be there yet — it's at least half an hour from the restaurant to the school. And limos aren't supposed to stop like _that_.

Annoyed, Quinn rolls down the partition, and the driver, panicked, is on the phone with 911, telling the police there's been an accident. Finn looks over at Quinn. She doesn't seem too concerned. "It was the car right in front of me," the limo driver says, "this little red Volvo —"

_No._

Finn shoots out of his seat, shoving open the door and tumbling out. He ignores Quinn's shout. A few other cars have pulled over to the side of the road, and Finn sees Kurt nearly fall out of Blaine's car, and then he sees —

His heart stops. The car lies overturned in the center of the road, glass everywhere. He _knows_ that car, that stupid little red Volvo. That's Sam's car, and two hours ago, Finn saw Sam hold open the door and help Rachel into _that car_. Finn stumbles forward.

There's a stranger hunched down in front of the car, saying, "I'm gonna get you outta there, kid, just hold on, now . . ." and Finn can't breathe as he bends over, tries to see in the car, calls out her name. Sam hangs upside down, held in place by his seat belt, and he blinks dazedly at Finn and the stranger. But where's Rachel?

_Where's Rachel?_

Finn doesn't give a fuck about Sam. "Where's the girl?" he asks the man, almost shoving him aside. "Is the girl okay?" He races around to the other side of the car as the man frowns at him, but Rachel isn't there. Rachel isn't in the car. What happened? Did she find another ride? Did — ?

And then Kurt lets out a blood-curling scream.

Finn spins around wildly, and his eyes snare on the mess of pink taffeta lying twenty feet down the road. The ground drops under him, and he sprints blindly towards her, falling to his knees beside her, beside _Rachel_. He can hear sirens in the distance, but all he can see is her, is glass and blood and _her._ There's glass in her stomach, a sharp jagged piece that thrusts out from the bloodied, torn material of her dress.

He reaches forward, his hand trembling, and touches her pulse point — it's faint, but it's there, it's _definitely_ there. She's still alive. _She's still alive._ She's just unconscious, probably knocked out or something, but she's alive.

"Rachel," he whispers. "Wake up, Rach, come on." He gently shakes her. Nothing.

People shout, sirens sound, more cars squeal to sudden stops. Finn doesn't care. He reaches out and takes her hand. "It's gonna be okay," he says, keeping his finger pressed to her neck so that he can feel the steady pulse.

But it's — it's growing fainter, and he presses harder, because he won't _let_ it stop. "Just — just wait a second, and the ambulance'll be here," he tells her, desperate, "and you'll be okay. Just hold on. Just one second. Come on." He's crying, but he doesn't realise until his own tears splatter onto her face.

She doesn't respond. She's still unconscious. And her pulse — it's gone. No. _No._ It's a mistake. He runs his finger along her neck, trying to find the pulse again. There's nothing there. "Rachel!" he cries, panic and desperation squeezing him. "Stay with me! Rachel, no, please!" He touches her cheek, shaking her a little, trying to wake her up, trying to make her open those big, brown eyes, because she's not dead — she's _not._

He falls forward, clutching her, and people scream his name, and car lights flash, and he shakes and sobs and begs her to open her eyes.

* * *

><p>A car horn honks.<p>

He rolls over in bed, the sheets tangling around his legs, and glares groggily up at the ceiling. His head pounds, and he tries to remember what he did last night. It's Sunday, right? So last night was Saturday, and . . . and he and Puck didn't get drunk or something, did they? Last weekend Finn had the _worst_ hangover.

In sudden, random busts, screams fill Finn's ears, and it all rushes back to him. He remembers the the limo skidding to a stop and Sam hanging upside down and glass and blood and _Rachel_ — Finn sits up in bed, his breathing erratic, panic freezing his veins. _No_. No. It didn't happen. It was all a fucking nightmare. Right?

_Right_?

He races down the stairs, stumbling slightly and banging his knee on the banister. His mom is pouring a glass of juice, Burt's watching the news on the tiny kitchen television, and Kurt's reading the comics. "Kurt — last night — Rachel?" Finn asks, unable to string a full sentence together.

"I'm sorry?" Kurt asks, blinking blankly up at Finn.

"What happened last night at prom?" Finn demands.

"Prom?" Kurt repeats, raising his eyebrows. "Prom isn't until _next_ weekend, Finn."

"Sweetheart, are you feeling okay?" his mom asks, glancing over at him from the fridge, her eyes crinkled slightly in concern.

"I — yeah, I'm just . . . I had a — a nightmare, or something." He smiles tightly and slowly leaves the kitchen. That's right. Prom doesn't happen for another week. Finn just had a really bad, really realistic nightmare. That's it.

Still, when he makes it up to his room, he scrolls through his cell phone and hits _send_ before he can stop himself. He holds his breath as the phone rings once, twice, three times, _four_ times —

"Finn?" She sounds shocked. But she also sounds _alive_.

"Hey, Rachel," he says, smiling a little as he sinks down on his bed.

"I — what — " She pauses, and he freaks out a little. _Is_ something wrong with her? "Is there . . . is there something you need?" she finally asks.

Shit. He didn't think about that. "I'm just — I wanted to ask you a question about, um, juice."

"Juice? Well, okay," Rachel says slowly. "Go ahead."

"Um, if I'm not . . . if I want to be healthier, should I drink grape juice or orange juice?"

There's another long pause.

"Rachel?"

"Oh, well, that really depends," she says. "Juice is, of course, a much healthier alternative to sodas of any sort. You should be sure not to drink juice overloaded with sugar, however. Now, between the two, grape juice is really better, as it has many more anti-oxidants, but, on the other hand, orange juice. . . ." She goes on for a little while.

He doesn't really listen to what she says, just to the sound of her voice.

Stupid nightmares.

* * *

><p>Mondays suck.<p>

He sleeps in late, and his mom ends up pounding on the door to wake him up, which is as totally a sucky way to wake up as Monday is a sucky day. Or something. He tries to catch some more sleep in the shower, but then he doesn't really have time to eat breakfast, and he has to have toast on the go. And everything _really_ goes to shit when he pulls into the parking lot and sees Rachel step out of Sam's car.

What the _fuck_ is that?

His mind flashes to his nightmare.

Rachel had been Sam's date, hadn't she? He doesn't usually remember dreams, but he can remember this one perfectly; he can remember that they all took pictures at Tina's house, and Sam was with Rachel, and Finn had been so pissed when he found out, but he couldn't do anything.

And then Sam had gone and gotten in a fucking car accident and killed Rachel.

Sam says something to Rachel as they start towards the school, and she giggles and looks up at him happily. Finn's chest tightens. Seriously. What. The. Fuck. Is. _That_? Sam's a big douche. He doesn't eat anything he actually enjoys, and he gave Quinn a stupid _promise ring_ just to rope her into being his girlfriend so that he'd be cool, and now suddenly he wants to date Rachel? He must want something from her. He's _using_ her, just like Jesse St. Jackass.

Like, Finn knew Rachel and Sam were friends or something, but he didn't think it was anything more than that. Maybe it's not. Friends can give each other rides to school, right? The only reason they might be more is cause they were in Finn's dream.

But it was a _dream_.

(No, it was a nightmare — with too much blood and glass and body bags and — and he's not gonna think about that, not gonna think about Rachel _dead_, no, no, _never._)

Rachel isn't dating Sam. They're _friends_. After first period, though, Finn sees her in the hallway, and then he sees Sam beside her, and he watches as Sam wraps his arm around Rachel's shoulders. Finn just gapes, nearly dropping the books in his hand.

He needs to talk to Rachel.

* * *

><p>"Hey," he says, setting his lunch tray down on the table.<p>

Rachel looks up from the sheet music in surprise. She opens her mouth, pauses, and then clears her throat a little. "Hi," she finally says. "Is, um, is everything okay?"

"Yeah," he says, and he sits down. "I just thought I'd eat with you. That's cool, right?" He hasn't eaten with her in a long, long time, but it's not so weird — they used to eat every lunch together when they dated, sometimes in the cafeteria, sometimes outside, and sometimes here in the choir room.

"Um, sure," she says, smiling briefly. "How are you?"

He shrugs. "Fine. There was a pop quiz in history. It sucked."

"Finn," Rachel says, looking partly amused and partly exasperated. "Mr. Jackson warned us about that quiz two weeks ago."

Finn frowned. "Seriously?" Had he really? Actually, that kinda made sense. "Damn."

Rachel laughs a little, and he watches as she pulls out her pink lunch box and carefully unwraps her sandwich. She looks back at her sheet music, but her eyes don't move. Her shoulders are tight, and he can see that crinkle in her forehead that means she's trying to wrap her head around something.

Oh, come on. It's not _that_ random that he's having lunch with her. Right?

He opens his milk carton and drinks half in one go. And then he lets it rip — "So you and Sam, huh?"

Her eyebrows fly up as she looks back at him. "Me and Sam?" she repeats, but there's almost a triumphant smirk or something in her gaze now. "We're friends."

"You looked a lot like something more earlier," he says.

Her lips purse, she sets her sandwich down, and she straightens slightly as she gazes sharply at him. "Finn, have you come to eat lunch with me simply to question my friendship with Sam?" Her voice has an edge, and he _knows_ that edge. It is _not_ a good edge.

"Look," he says, "I just don't think you should hang out with him so much. He's kind of a tool."

"He's kind of a tool? You don't even know him! You were friends for all of five minutes at the start of the school year, and you've since had, at best, a tenuous _acquaintanceship_ with him — when, that is, the two of you don't give in to Neanderthal tendencies as you compete for social dominance!"

He doesn't really know how to respond to that. He just goes for what he knows. "He's gonna hurt you, Rachel."

"He's going to — oh! Oh!" She stomps her foot under the table and then shoves her seat back so she can stand up to her full 5'2 stature. "How dare you, Finn Hudson!" she says. "How _dare _you!"

"Rachel, I'm just looking out for you!" he protests. Why does she have to get so worked up?

"Really, Finn? I had no idea you cared _so_ much."

"Of course I care," he says, frowning. "You're my friend, and I —"

Her eyes narrow, and his speech falters. "If I'm your friend, Finn, let me be the first, and I'm sure not the _last_, to tell you that you treat your friends _very_ poorly."

"Rachel —"

"I'm not finished. We're co-captains of Glee club, and we work well together. We managed to win Regionals, and we will win Nationals in three weeks, too. But for all intents and purposes, we have no semblance of a relationship outside of Glee and the occasional moments you _deign_ to speak to me in some sort of patronizing benevolence! Sam, on the other hand —"

"Wait, come on, Rach —!"

"_Sam_, on the other hand," she repeats, her voice rising, "has been nothing but wonderful to me since he and Santana had their disastrous break-up. He helps me with my facebook videos, and he listens when I talk, and he gives me rides to school, and he would be here now to eat lunch with me if he didn't have to meet with his math tutor! He _is_ my friend, the sort of friend you _used_ to be!"

He gapes at her. How can she say all this?

"Excuse me," she says, "but I think I'd like to eat alone." She packs up her lunch with jerky movements, shoves all of her sheet music into her favorite pink folder, and storms from the room. He watches her go, and he doesn't say a word.

When, exactly, did things get so messed up with Rachel? He doesn't talk to her that much, that's true, but it's not his fault. He had to put, like, some . . . some _distance_ between them, and then suddenly every conversation was awkward and — but he tries to be nice every chance he can, and he tries to make sure that she knows she's not alone, and that he supports her, and that he knows she's gonna get out of here, and. . . .

He scrubs a hand over his face.

He can't ever do anything right.

He doesn't talk to Rachel for the rest of the day. He sees her in the parking lot after school. She's with Sam, and Finn glares at the two of them, at the way their hands continually brush, as if Sam wants to take her hand, like he has _any_ right. Sam helps Rachel into the car, and Finn's glare follows the stupid red Volvo out of the parking lot.

He _really_ hates Mondays.

* * *

><p>His head hurts <em>so<em> bad, and his back does, too, and he thinks he must have slept on it funny. He rolls over in bed and tries to force open his eyes. The room spins a little. He rubs sleepily at his eyes. What time is it? How late has he slept?

He slowly sits up, trying to stretch his back a little. He can hear voices downstairs. He glances at the clock, and his eyes sort of bug out of his head as he finally wakes up entirely. It's nearly eleven.

He shoves back his sheets and scrambles out of bed, 'cause he's supposed to be at school. He bangs into his dresser, though, and he realizes that throbbing in his head is a hangover. Seriously? He didn't drink anything last night. His stomach churns, though, and he rushes out of his bedroom and to the bathroom down the hall.

He makes it just in time.

Kurt walks in a few minutes later. Wiping his mouth, Finn glances up at him. "Dude," he says, "I can't go to school today." He frowns slightly when he realizes that Kurt should be at school now, too.

"It's Winter Break, Finn," Kurt says softly. "We don't have school." He smiles a little, something guarded in his gaze.

"Winter Break?" Finn says. "What — what do you — it's _not_. . . ." He stops and leans over the toilet again. Fuck.

Kurt sighs. "Why don't you finish up, take a shower, and dress? Then come downstairs. Carole made a lovely brunch spread, and . . . just please come down when you're ready, okay?"

Finn nods dumbly at him. He doesn't know what's going on, but, come on, what's new? He manages to strip and stumble into the shower, and he stands under the spray for a while, leaning against the wall and trying to make his hangover disappear from willpower alone. He feels _maybe_ a little better when he finishes, dresses, and starts downstairs.

He can smell bacon. He doesn't feel sick at the scent, and he thinks that's progress.

Nobody's in the kitchen, but he can hear _lots_ of voices in the living room.

He crosses the kitchen quickly and pushes open the half-closed door, only to stop in his tracks as everybody goes silent and stares at him. Kurt, Burt, and his mom are all there. Mr. Schue is on the couch, too, right next to Mrs. Pillsbury. Puck, Mike, and Tina are by the window, and Artie's next to the television. And Mr. and Mr. Berry are there, too, along with some woman that Finn's never seen before.

"Um," he says, frowning, "did I miss something?"

"Please, Finn," his mom murmurs, "have a seat." She rests her hands on his dad's old chair.

Uncertain, Finn goes over and sinks down, his eyes darting from person to person. "What's going on?" he asks quietly.

"We wanted to talk to you," Mr. Schue says. "Yesterday was a hard day for all of us, but . . . but you seemed to take it particularly hard, and that's understandable, it is. We wanted to talk with you, though."

He's so confused it's kind of _painful_. "About what?" he asks.

"About Rachel, dude," Puck says.

"Rachel?" Finn repeats. "I don't . . . look, guys, can somebody please just tell me what's going on?"

The woman who Finn doesn't know steps forward. "Finn, my name is Nancy Granger. I work with your mom at the hospital, and she's told me a lot about you, and about what you're going through. I thought I might be able to help."

He just stares at her.

She smiles a little. "Everyone in this room, Finn, cares very much about you, and they're all worried about you in the wake of your friend's death."

Finn tries to process her words. Who does she —? _Oh, no. _"Rachel?" he says, his breath growing shallow as he glances at everyone. "Are you talking about Rachel?" They can't be. That was just this really, really vivid nightmare, and —

"Yes, Finn," Mrs. Pillsbury answers kindly. "Now, I — I truly believe that grief is something we all handle differently. But —"

"But Rachel's been dead since prom," Puck cuts in, "and you can't do this anymore." Tina smacks his arm, but Finn doesn't see. He shoots to his feet. This isn't possible. Prom doesn't even happen for another, like, five days, and it's — what the fuck is going on?

Rachel's _not_ dead.

"We all miss her, Finn," Artie offers.

"We really do," Tina adds. "Mercedes and I go by the cemetery nearly every week."

"No!" Finn shouts, because he is _not_ gonna listen to this. "Look, I don't know what the _fuck_ you all are trying to do —"

"Finn!" his mom says, her eyes wide and heartbroken.

He just ignores her. "— but this is messed up and I'm not — I don't even — just — just —" He pushes his way out of the room. This must be another stupid nightmare or something. It has to be. They call out to him, but he doesn't stop. He goes into the kitchen. He needs some aspirin.

And, somehow, his eyes land on the wall calendar. His mom's one of those people who crosses the passing days out. According to the calendar, it's December — December 2011, and today's Monday, December 19th. He's, like, seven months in the future. No. No way. He tears his gaze from the calendar and starts towards the cabinet his mom keeps medicine in.

"Finn."

He can't ignore _him_. Slowly, he turns around. It's Mr. Berry, the one with glasses, the one who sang into his spoon alongside Rachel at the table when Finn first had dinner at their house. The man looks so much _older_ than he ever has before, so much _smaller_, and Finn feels his own shoulders slump as he faces him.

"Mr. Berry," he says quietly.

"I didn't get out of bed yesterday," Mr. Berry says. He pauses, and then he sighs. "See, there are three days in my life that stand out above all others as the three _best_ days. There's the day I met Leroy. There's the day Leroy and I committed our love to one another in a ceremony with our friends and family. And — and there's the day a nurse handed me this perfect six pounds, seven ounces and told me I had a daughter."

Finn swallows thickly. Slowly, Mr. Berry takes off his glasses and methodically wipes the lens on his sweater vest. "I remember that day so clearly. December 18th, 1994. The day Rachel was born. And all day yesterday, I laid in bed and thought about the day, and about her, and about how much I missed her."

Mr. Berry slowly put his glasses back on, and they almost magnified the tears that had gathered in his eyes. "I don't think I'll ever _not_ miss her. I'll certainly never be the same without her."

"Mr. Berry," Finn whispers. Rachel isn't dead. She _can't_ be.

"But I can't not live my life, even if it's only half a life without my baby. I still have Leroy. I still have so many other people I love and care about, and who love and care about me. And I have to cling to that. I have to cling to the knowledge that Rachel wouldn't want . . . she wouldn't want anything less than the best for me."

Finn still doesn't know what to say.

"Your mom told me she's never seen you so drunk as you were last night, Finn," Mr. Berry says. "And I know that's not what Rachel would want. Maybe — maybe this — this _grief intervention_, or whatever it is, isn't the right way to go. But something has to change."

Finn just sort of nods.

"I'll leave you be," Mr. Berry says, slipping his hands into his pockets. "But if it helps," he says, glancing back from the doorway, "I know Rachel loved you — so, _so_ much." He gives a small smile and leaves.

Finn just wants to go back to sleep.

* * *

><p>He does.<p>

He escapes up to his bedroom, he locks the door, and he buries his face in his pillow.

This isn't real. None of this is real. Rachel isn't dead. This is all a stupid nightmare. He couches himself over and over again with the words, and at some point he falls asleep. By the time he wakes up, it's dark out. He goes downstairs and avoids eye contact with Burt, Kurt, and his mom. Everyone else has gone.

His mom makes lasagna for dinner, and she touches her hand gently to his shoulder as she hands him a plate.

He goes back to bed as soon as he's finished. But he can't fall asleep again, because what if this _isn't_ a dream, and this is, like, some alternate reality that he's trapped in? What if he can't leave? What if he's forever stuck in this world where Rachel's _dead_? That'd be the worst possible world _ever_. He starts to think about that Sandra Bullock movie when she travelled through time to try to save her dead husband, and he wonders if that's happening to him.

But he can't remember something. Does Sandra save her husband at the end or not?

He falls asleep eventually.

* * *

><p>Kurt wakes him up. "Are you excited?" Kurt says, sitting on the edge of Finn's bed.<p>

Finn frowns. "Am I excited for what?" he grumbles. The day before, or maybe just another nightmare, flashes vividly through his head. He sits up and looks over at Kurt with wide eyes. Was it a nightmare, or —?

"Oh, come on, Finn, you know what day it is!" Kurt exclaims. "It's Saturday, May 28th!" he trills. "The big day! Our Junior Prom!"

"What?" Finn asks, his eyes wide. Wait. _Wait._ He's had this conversation before. That first nightmare, the one that ended with Rachel in a body bag — that nightmare started like this. But then when he was in the future — was that a nightmare, too and this is another one or . . .?

This is _way_ too confusing.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, Finn!" Kurt says. "I'll let you sleep for a little while longer, even though it's already _noon_, but you need to be ready to leave for Tina's to take pictures _promptly _at four!" Kurt stands, gives Finn another pointed look, and then trounces from the room.

Finn falls back on the bed and stares at his ceiling. Okay. _Okay._ He needs to think about this. It's prom. And . . . and he needs to talk to Rachel. Because what if she dies tonight? He can't let that happen. He'll prove that it doesn't _have_ to happen, that the future he was in yesterday isn't real, and then everything'll go back to normal.

He calls Rachel. She doesn't pick up. He texts her. _Can we talk_? She never replies. He calls again. Still, the phone rings four times and then goes to voicemail. He dresses, showers, and eats lunch. Kurt has his tux on by two, but Finn only watches baseball on the TV and texts Rachel some more. She still doesn't reply. He calls her a few more times — nothing.

Finally, frustrated, he decides to go see her. "Where are you going?" Kurt calls.

"Out," Finn says. He drives to her house in record time. But when the front door swings open, Mr. Berry stands there, not Rachel. It's the Mr. Berry with glasses, the one who spoke so sadly to Finn yesterday. Finn's thoughts flee.

"Oh, hello, Finn!" Mr. Berry says, smiling. "This is a pleasant surprise. Is there something I can do for you? Rachel isn't here, you know."

Finn frowns. "She's not?"

"No, she's been over at Tina's with the other girls all day." Mr. Berry smiles again. "But you can still come in, if you'd like. I'll make some tea! It's been such a long time since you've been by. You never finished your explanation of the rules of basketball, you know." His eyes soften a little. Finn hasn't been by in a long time, he's right — not since he and Rachel broke up in December.

"Yeah, I know, um, I really shouldn't, though," Finn says. "Kurt's probably gonna freak out if I don't get back soon. Thanks, though."

He'll talk to Rachel at Tina's.

He makes it through the next hour. When he pulls into Tina's driveway, though, he sees Rachel talking with Mercedes. Her hair is curled, and she has on this big dress that involves lots of pink and lots of taffeta, just like in his first nightmare. Shit. This stuff is _repeating_. He follows Kurt out of the car.

He _needs_ to talk to Rachel. Every time he gets close, though, somebody pulls him over for another picture, or pulls Rachel in for a picture. Seriously, he can't get within two feet of her. The whole Glee club is there, and all the parents have come over, too, and everybody's so _happy_.

Finn's not.

Finally, he can't take it anymore. He knows he should be subtle and stealth and all that, but whatever. "Rachel!" he says loudly, clearly, and she looks over. But then she shakes her head almost imperceptibly and turns away from him again.

What the fuck?

Kurt suddenly grabs his arm. "Come on," he says. He drags Finn around to the side of the house.

"Dude, let go of me," Finn protests. "I have to talk to Rachel."

"No, what you need to do is leave Rachel alone," Kurt says.

Finn sighs. "Look, you don't get it. Just — I just need to talk to her, okay?"

"If I don't get it, then explain it to me." Kurt crosses his arms over his chest.

Finn glares at him. "It's . . . I —" Where does he even start?

But Kurt gazes up at him knowingly, shaking his head. "Oh, Finn, is this about Sam? It is, isn't it?"

"What? No —"

"It is, and you really shouldn't do this," Kurt says, not letting Finn get a word in. "If it makes you feel better, I think they've only come as friends, but even if they've come as _more_ than friends, you really shouldn't make a fuss. It's not fair to Rachel. You've moved on, and she deserves to move on, too."

"I —"

"I thought you were friends, you and Rachel," Kurt says.

"We are!"

"Then be a good friend and let Rachel enjoy her prom night," Kurt tells him.

"But she's gonna die!" Finn shouts.

Kurt gapes at him. "Finn," he murmurs. "I don't. . . . Why don't you take a minute to calm down? I don't know what's wrong with you, but you've been strange all week. Calm down, and don't ruin this for everyone, _please_."

Kurt walks away.

What's Finn supposed to do now?

* * *

><p>By the time Finn finally returns to the front of the house a few minutes later, Rachel and Sam have already left. Most everybody has, actually, and Quinn looks <em>pissed<em> as she stands by a limo. "Come on!" she shouts the moment she sees him. "The limo's been here _forever_."

His stomach heavy, Finn climbs into the back of the limo with her. "Why'd we get a limo, anyway?" he asks her as she slides in beside him.

"Because I wanted one," she snaps. "Why have you been so _pissy_ all afternoon? I'm the only one who has any right to be mad, considering you _forgot my corsage_! And what did you do yesterday, anyway? Where were you?" She glares him as she fires off the questions.

"I was nowhere," he mutters. He leans against the window.

The rest of the ride is uncomfortable, and so is dinner. Quinn complains and complains and complains about the fact that they're having their prom at the school, which is apparently the most terrible atrocity _ever_. Finn doesn't give a flying fuck. He just wants dinner to be over. But when they set off from the restaurant for McKinley, he starts to freak out a little bit. He tries to talk himself down. Maybe this is all premature. Maybe this will turn out differently than before.

Nightmares don't follow patterns or anything, do they?

Then the limo screeches to a stop. "Why are we stopping?" he asks breathlessly, but he already knows, doesn't he?

"I don't know," Quinn says, frowning. "We can't possibly be at the school already. It's at _least_ a half hour —" He lunges for the door and tumbles out of the limo. "Finn!" Quinn shouts.

He spins around, even as Blaine's car pulls up on the side of the road and Kurt tears out of it before it's even come to a full stop. Finn sees the wreck of Sam's car again, just like before, and he races over. "I'll call 911!" Blaine shouts.

A man races out of his Prius towards Sam's car, but Finn barely sees him, not one his eyes immediately find the swatch of pink up on the road ahead. "RACHEL!" he screams.

She's just _lying_ there, just like before, her leg at an odd angle, and blood's _everywhere_. But she's still alive. He sinks down beside her, and her glossy eyes look up him as she takes slow, shuddering breaths. She's still conscious. That's good, right? That's good.

Ambulances sound in the distance. "Help's coming, Rach, help's coming," he mutters. "It's okay, it's all okay, just stay with me." He reaches for her hand. Slowly, her fingers curl around his. "It's okay," he repeats. He doesn't know what else to say. But she won't die this time. She won't.

Her mouth slowly opens and closes, and a little blood bubbles out of her lips. She's trying to say something. "What?" he asks, leaning closer to her. "What is it?"

"You," she says, "you — you —" She chokes a little.

"Me what, Rach? What, baby?"

"Did," she says. "You — d-did — good." She almost smiles a little, and then — and then her eyes focus on something over his shoulder, and her head falls a little to the side. He grabs her face, turns her to look at him again, but she can't see, because her eyes are glazed, and —

"No! _No_! Rachel, don't — they're here now! The ambulances are here now!"

She's already gone.

Hands wrap around his shoulders and pull him to his feet. "It's alright, son," somebody says. He won't take his eyes off of Rachel. He can't leave her. He can't let them zip her up in some black bag and take her away. He can't —

"Oh, God, is she — is she _dead_?" Kurt breathes. "No! That's not possible. I can't — I won't — No! _Rachel_!" Kurt screams.

Finn's heard the sound before.

He stumbles away from the policeman. He falls into his knees and starts to ralf his guts out. And when he finally manages to look up, he sees Sam, standing in the middle of the road, a dazed look on his face as he ignores the EMTs that swarm around him.

Finn pushes himself up. "Hey," he shouts. "Sam!" He stalks over. Sam glances at him. And Finn punches him in the face. Sam stumbles backwards, an EMT catches him, and Finn pulls back his arm a second time. A second EMT holds him back, though.

This happened last time, too.

* * *

><p>His alarm goes off at six, just like it does every weekday.<p>

Finn rolls over and smacks the stupid radio until it shuts up. He doesn't want to go to school. He feels like crap. Then again, he _never_ wants to go to school. He has to — his eyes go wide. Last night, he fell asleep in a hospital chair, his head on his mom's shoulder.

Rachel was dead.

But now?

He races out of bed, tripping slightly on his sheets, and then he pounds down the stairs. He skids into the kitchen. "Mom!" he shouts.

She turns around in shock. "Where's the fire?" she asks.

"What happened last night?" he demands.

"I don't —"

"What day is it?"

"It's Monday, sweetheart."

"WHAT MONDAY?"

"Finn, I don't — it's Monday the 23rd. May 23rd. Are you sick, honey?"

Finn slumps against the wall. It's Monday again. How is this possible? What's happening? Is this all one long nightmare? Is this — what if this like that movie _Groundhog Day_, except he's living a lot of different days over and over again? "Finn?" his mom presses.

"I'm fine," Finn mutters. He closes his eyes. He sees Rachel dead. His eyes snap open. "I just had a really bad nightmare," he tells his mom. She doesn't look like she believes him, but he avoids her gaze until he has to leave for school.

* * *

><p>Sam and Rachel walk through the parking lot just like they did before.<p>

Rachel even has on the same outfit — a plaid skirt and a red sweater with a dancing plaid bunny stitched on the front. She smiles and giggles at the same moments, and she disappears into the school without one glance at Finn. He goes to class. In first period, Mr. Jackson hands out a quiz. Finn can't believe this. It's the exact same day. None of this makes sense.

He just needs to get through this day.

He watches Rachel all day. He watches her in the hallway when Sam puts his arm around her shoulders, and he watches her when Sam isn't there. He almost goes to eat lunch with her again when he sees her disappear into the choir room after fourth period. But he remembers how that went last time, and guilt overwhelms him.

He eats his lunch out on the bleachers, and he thinks about what she said.

Does she really think of him like that? Is any of this real at all? He spends all afternoon playing _Call of Duty_ and working really hard _not_ to call Rachel. When he goes to bed, he has no idea what he wants to wake up to.

* * *

><p>Everything seems normal.<p>

His alarm goes off at six. It's a school day. He brushes his teeth, he takes a shower, he gets dressed. It's all normal. Maybe he's finally woken up from . . . from it all. He goes downstairs. Burt smiles at him over the newspaper. His mom offers him a glass of juice.

And he glances at the wall calendar just to be sure.

_Fuck._

Monday's crossed out, but so are Tuesday and Wednesday. Apparently, today's Thursday. He's skipped two days. Why? Is that right? "Hey, Mom," he says.

"It's Thursday, sweetie," his mom answers absently. "Thursday, May 26th." When he frowns, she shoots him a small smile. "You've asked every day this week," she says. "You really need to get some more sleep."

He smiles tightly at her and stares at his juice. Why is this happening? Who did he piss off upstairs? As he walks to his truck, he can't help it. He looks up. "Are you pissed about the whole grilled cheese sandwich thing?" he asks. Then he feels like an idiot, and he curses himself and climbs into his truck, trying to make a plan.

But he's never been great with _plans_.

He sees Rachel at her locker, and he thinks about what he should say to her. Would she be able to help? She's as good at making plans as he's _not_. And she'd help him, right? She always helps him. No matter what else is messed up in their lives, she helps him if he really needs her. That's part of the reason she's so great and all.

He nods his head. He'll talk to her. He leans into his locker to find his physics textbook, and when he pulls back to shove it into his backpack, he jumps a little. Rachel's right there, and she smiles shyly at him. "Hey, so I've done some more research," she says.

"Research?" he repeats.

"Mmm-hmm. Well, I watched _Back to the Future, _as you asked. I actually thought it was rather amusing, I'll admit. But I found the doc's explanation for time travel to be _vastly_ incorrect. I can understand why he sold you on his theory, though, because it's so simple, and we always want a simple explanation — it's a natural human inclination. I mean, isn't that what's behind Occam's Razor?"

"Um, yeah," he says slowly.

"So, as I said before, time really isn't _linear_. It's circular. And you can travel around that circle, but you can't change any part of it, as what's going to happened has already happened. I've drawn up a picture for you — I think I can explain it to you in the same sort of terms the doc uses." She starts to rustle through her backpack.

"Rachel," he murmurs, "I'm not really . . . I'm not really sure what you're talking about."

She pauses and glances up to frown at him. "We're talking about time travel," she says.

"Time travel?" he squeaks, and his mind flickers over the last few days. "Time travelling isn't real."

"Finn," Rachel says, and she leans in, lowering her voice to a whisper, "_you're_ time travelling, aren't you?"

His eyes go wide. Is that what's happening? But how does she know anything about that? "I'm not . . . I don't . . ." He can't think this fast. He can't process all this. _Has_ he told Rachel? He doesn't remember, but he's skipped some days, right? So if he's in the future now, then . . . but. . . .

"Oh," Rachel says, understanding flashing in her eyes.

"What?" he says. What does she understand? Can she explain it to him?

"You haven't yet . . . Okay. That's fine. We'll try again next time, I guess." She crinkles her brow a little. "This really _is _very confusing, isn't it?"

He laughs a little hysterically. "I know," he says. "But what — what do _you_ know?"

"Nothing," she says breezily. "I don't know anything at all." And she leans up and kisses his cheek. "Don't worry," she murmurs softly. "I'm going to help you." She turns to walk away.

"Wait!" he shouts, and half the hall glances over at him. He tries not to blush. Rachel smiles, shakes her head at him, and disappears around the corner before he can say something else or even make his stupid legs run to catch up with her.

He makes it through the rest of the day on autopilot.

He gets a D+ on that quiz from Monday. He's not really shocked, and he definitely doesn't care.

He goes to bed early that night, his head swirling with thoughts of Rachel promising to help him one moment and then lying in the road dead the next.

* * *

><p>He wakes up before the alarm this time. He runs downstairs.<p>

"Good morn —"

"What day is it?" he asks.

His mom glances up from the sink with raised eyebrows. "It's Tuesday," she says slowly. He stares and waits for more. "The 24th," she adds. "Tuesday, the 24th."

"Of May, right?"

"No, of April," she says.

"What?" he exclaims, his eyes wide. Oh, _fuck._

"Sweetie, sweetie —I'm kidding! I was kidding!" His mom looks at him like he's a little crazy. "It is May. May 24th."

He lets out a slow breath. Okay. This is a little better, he thinks. If he just jumps around the same week, he can handle that. And he is _jumping_ from day to day, isn't he? He's jumping through time. That's what's happening. He's put those pieces together. He's jumping through time so that he can figure out a way to save Rachel, right? That's got to be it.

And he will save her.

"Finn?" his mom asks hesitantly.

"I'm fine," he says automatically. "But — but don't joke about stuff like that."

"Of course," his mom says, biting her lip. "I'm sorry. That was very thoughtless of me."

"It's cool," he says. "Just don't do it again."

"Never."

* * *

><p>His back <em>really<em> hurts.

He thinks maybe time travel is bad for you back. His wrist is sore, too, and he doesn't think it helps when he bangs his hand against his locker right before homeroom. But Quinn just sneaks up on him, and he's on edge enough as it is. "Hi," she says, and Finn tries not to hiss at the shooting pain in his wrist.

She leans against the lockers, her books clutched to her chest, and blinks up at him softly.

"Ah, hey," he says, managing to smile a little. "What's up?"

"I haven't seen you a lot lately," she says. She looks down, biting her lip, and then gazes back up at him shyly. "I've missed you."

"Yeah," he says. The thing is, though, he _doesn't_ really miss Quinn when she's around. Like, she's great when she's there, but when she's not, okay, that's cool, too. And he's had other stuff to worry about than what's going on with Quinn, which is pretty much always the same thing: prom.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I've been so busy lately, and I know I've neglected you. The prom committee just takes a lot of my time. But prom's going to be so amazing. You know it's this weekend, right?"

He nods. He knows. He _really_ knows.

"Good," she says, smiling. "I called _Barker's _last night, and I ordered my corsage. You need to pick it up on Saturday morning. You can't forget."

Or she'll be pissed, yeah, he knows. He sighs. He can't deal with this. "Look, Quinn, about prom —" he starts, his mind whirling with memories of pictures in Tina's front yard and a limo and a boring dinner and then Rachel motionless, Rachel bloody, Rachel _dead_ —

"I'm so excited," Quinn says. "It's going to be the most amazing night of our lives." She bites her lip and rests a hand on his arm. "We'll be there together, and — and maybe after we'll really _be_ together, if you want."

He frowns. She's implying she'll have sex with him, right? She's kind of been implying that for a while now, but he's . . . he just can't think about everything with her right now. "Okay," he says. "I'll think about it."

Her expression freezes. "You'll — you'll think about it?" she repeats, a shocked note in her voice.

"Yeah," he says, nodding, already ready for this conversation to be over. "I'll let you know or whatever." He slams his locker shut and walks away.

He needs to talk to Rachel. He already feels like it's sophomore year again and he's desperately trying to find a minute alone with Rachel when he can be himself — he doesn't need Quinn to make that feeling worse. He doesn't see Rachel before homeroom, but he spies her at lunch. She's poking some sort of vegetable casserole from the cafeteria.

He quickly sits down beside her. "Hey," he greets, smiling cautiously.

"Hi," she says. He realizes that, if he's got his dates right in his head (and he spent all of English trying to get them right) at this point in time he hasn't talked to Rachel about anything, since he re-did Monday. Is that how it works? Does he get to re-do days?

"You mind if I sit here?" he asks.

"No," she replies. "Not at all." She smiles a little, but she watches him carefully.

He nods at her tray as he opens up his milk carton. "Have you started buying lunch?" he asks.

"Oh, no, I just had to today. I forgot my lunch at home. It's the first time ever, you know!"

"That sucks," he says.

"Yes, it really does. Do you even have any idea what this is?" She stabs the casserole with her fork. "It _says_ spinach casserole, but. . . ."

"It's better not to think about it," he tells her, and she giggles. He's missed this. When was the last time they just sat talked about nothing, anyway? He can't even remember anymore. He almost doesn't want to bring up the whole time travelling thing.

But he's got to.

"So there's kinda something I need to talk to you about. Something . . . something's been happening to me."

She bites her lip. "Is this about last night?" she asks quietly.

"Last night?" What happened last night?

She leans closer to him. "Look, I said I didn't _not_ believe you, but I'm still not so sure about any of this, Finn. You have to admit that it's _crazy_. And, before you ask, no, I haven't opened the envelope. I'm going to wait until the day is over to see if you were right."

He has _no_ idea what she's talking about. "Um," he starts.

She sighs. "Don't look so shocked," she says. "You knew I would act like this, right? I mean, how many times have you lived this day?"

He blinks at her. "I — _you already know_?" he asks. How does she know all this stuff before he tells her anything? If she already knows by _Tuesday_, when is he supposed to tell her, then?

She frowns. "You told me last night, Finn."

Oh. _Okay_. He's supposed to tell her Monday night. But for whatever reason, he didn't. Next time he lives out Monday, though, he'll tell her everything. That should work, right? "Sorry," he finally says, because she's staring intently at him. "This is all really confusing. This is actually the first time I remember living this day, and I don't remember having told you anything."

"Okay," she says, but she still doesn't sound certain of anything.

And then Sam sets down his lunch. "Hey," he says, grinning a little at Rachel as he sits beside her. He looks surprised to see Finn there. "Hey Finn," he adds after a beat.

"Sam," Finn says, nodding. He flexes his fist a little under the table, and he remembers the feel of his knuckles slamming into Sam's face. Finn wouldn't have to do this, wouldn't have to work so hard to save Rachel's life, wouldn't have to see her die over and over again every time he closed his eyes, if Sam left her the fuck alone.

"How was your morning?" Rachel asks Sam.

"Meh," he says, shrugging. Rachel starts to chatter to him, and she tells him about her trig class and how she thinks Mrs. Hannigan purposely doesn't call on her. Sam tells her that Mrs. Hannigan just knows Rachel is smarter than her. Rachel mentions that the song _What is This Feeling?_ came on her ipod when she was running this morning, and she thought of her relationship with Quinn. Sam tells her she should get Mr. Schue to let her and Quinn sing it.

Finn watches them, feels like some sort of third wheel, and tries not to make a scene.

"Hey, so, um, I've got to go," he interrupts. He smiles nervously at Rachel. "I'll see you later."

"I'll see you," she says. She starts to complain about the poor quality food that's served to American children across the country, and she doesn't even glance at Finn as he stands up.

He doesn't understand.

When did he and Rachel become _not_ friends?

(And how does he get her back — as a friend?)

* * *

><p>After dinner, he lies on his bed and stares up at the ceiling.<p>

He thinks about the Christmas tree lot. He thinks about how happy she had looked in that one moment that he had let her kiss him. He thinks about when she declared happily that the girls would lie there, just lie there. He thinks about when shouted that she was ready to kick some ass, and she had on that football uniform.

He thinks about the look on her face when she found out that he wanted to open a kissing booth, and then the look on her face when she found out he kissed Quinn. He thinks about Justin Bieber and what a dumbass he made of himself, and for what? He thinks about how adorable she was drunk, even as she made everything so much _harder_. He thinks about her songs, how she finally _felt_ the music she wrote.

He thinks about how he watched her from a distance, and he was so proud of her, and he tried to tell her that, to make her know that the still believed in her, but . . .

. . . He thinks about how he couldn't spend too much time with her, because ten minutes with her made him want to take her up in his arms and hug her and kiss her and forgive her. And he couldn't, because she didn't love him, and she deserved better than him. He had Quinn, anyway, and they just worked better together. Everything was easier with Quinn. And Rachel was just too _much_ for him. He thinks about how time went by, and they talked less, just because, and. . . .

His mom knocks on his door. "Sweetheart," she says, "Rachel's downstairs. She came by to talk to you. Do you want me to send her up?"

He wipes his eyes. "I'm not really feeling good," he shouts. "Tell her I'll see her at school tomorrow, or something."

* * *

><p>"Wake up! Wake up! Finn, come on! Wake up!"<p>

Finn groans a little. Someone sits beside him and then bounces up and down, and the bed shifts. "Go away," Finn mutters. He's really not getting any sleep anymore.

"Are you excited?" Kurt exclaims gleefully. Finn rubs the sleep from his eyes and pushes himself up. He stares at Kurt. And he recognizes the look on his brother's face.

"Is it Saturday?" he asks, a little breathless. He doesn't want to this again. He just doesn't.

"That's right!" Kurt trills. "It's Saturday, May 28th! The big day! Our Junior Prom!"

_No._

* * *

><p>He drives to Tina's house this time, long before they're all supposed to meet up to take pictures. He pounds on her door, and he must look messed up when Tina answers the door, because her voice trails off before she even really says hello.<p>

"I need to talk to Rachel," he tells her, and he doesn't leave any room for argument.

"I'll get her," Tina replies. "Just one sec."

She totally takes longer than one second. He starts to think maybe Rachel'll refuse to talk to him, but if things work they way he thinks they might, then she's supposed to know by now what happens, right? 'Cause he tells her all about the time travel. But, wait, did he tell her about what would actually happen on prom night?

She comes to the door. Her hair is in curlers, and she's wearing jeans and a button-up shirt. "You shouldn't be here, Finn," she says, her voice soft. "You know that."

"No, actually," he says. "I don't know that. This is what I know: you can't go to prom tonight."

She crosses her arms over her chest and glances away from him. "Don't _do_ this, Finn."

"Just — come on, Rachel, just look me in the eye and tell me you even really _want_ to go to prom tonight with Sam. If you want to go, fine, I believe that, but you don't want to go with Sam. You don't. I _know_ you don't."

"Of course I don't!" she finally exclaims, her eyes shiny. "We _both_ know that! But that doesn't much matter, does it? You promised me, Finn. You _promised_ me. And even if you hadn't — you know you have to let this happen."

"Let what happen?" he asks. "Do you even know what I'm talking about, Rachel? You're going to die!" He tries not to shout the words. "That's what's gonna happen if you get in that car with Sam tonight. You're gonna _die_, Rachel!"

"Oh, Finn," she says, her expression softening and she looks up at him with wide, sad eyes. "You haven't put all the pieces together yet, have you?"

"What — what pieces?" he sputters.

She reaches out and touches his cheek, her fingers running across his skin. "You can't change this, Finn. Don't try. It'll only make everything harder." She smiles a little, and he can see the tears start to gather in her eyelashes. "I really want to kiss you right now," she whispers. His heart catches in his throat. And then she steps back and starts to close the door.

"Rachel, wait —!"

The door closes before he can surge forward and stop her.

He pounds on the door for at least half an hour. No one lets him in.

* * *

><p>He comes back to Tina's house for pictures. Rachel avoids him, and he knows Kurt has an eye on him, ready to stop him should he try to <em>make<em> Rachel listen to him. Frustrated, Finn growls and snaps at everyone who tries to talk to him, and he eventually climbs into a limo with Quinn.

It all happens the same — her snide complains, dinner, the limo slamming to a stop, the rush into the street, the sight of Sam in the car, the sight of Rachel, and holding her hand as she tries to say something, as her eyes glaze over, as she dies.

He still throws up until he can't breathe.

And he stills beat the shit out of Sam.


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes at six when his alarm goes off.

He brushes his teeth. He takes a shower. He goes downstairs.

"Good morning, sweetheart," his mother greets, smiling.

"What's the date?" he asks.

"Mmm —" She glances at the calendar. "The 23rd," she says.

"Monday?" he asks, just to be sure.

She nods. "That's right."

He eats slowly, his mind running on overdrive. Okay. It's Monday. This is the day he's _supposed_ to tell Rachel everything, right? Because obviously there's some sort of plan going on, some sort of map of events, and he has to follow that map. He has to . . . Rachel talked about a circle. He has to stay on the circle. And the circle wants him to tell Rachel tonight.

But how?

* * *

><p>He sees her in the parking lot with Sam.<p>

He doesn't try to talk to her. He lets her laugh with Sam in the halls, he lets Sam put his arm around her shoulder, and he lets her eat lunch alone in the choir room. He's suddenly afraid to approach her. How did that happen? _Why_ did this happen? Why did he let them just, you know, _drift_ apart?

He thinks he might have gotten a one hundred on his history test, 'cause, you know, he's taken it three times and gone over the answers in class a lot, too. He wonders if that's like cheating.

He has last period with Rachel on Mondays, and he springs into action as soon as the bell rings. "Rachel!" he calls, hurrying over to her and blocking her exit. Jeez. She's not some skittish animal. _Still_. . . .

"Hello, Finn," she greets hesitantly. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," he says. "I just . . . I wanted to ask a favor."

"Okay," she says uneasily.

"Do you want to come over? To my house, I mean?" She's shocked, he can tell, so he rushes on quickly. "For Glee stuff!" he says. "I really need to . . . that song Mr. Shue wants me to do for Nationals, or maybe do, or whatever — I feel really uncomfortable with the second verse. Could you help me practice?"

And Rachel, good, sweet, wonderful _Rachel_, smiles at him. "Of course I'll help you," she says. "Let me just tell Sam that I don't need a ride, and then we can go over to your house. But could you give me a ride home after?"

"Yeah, sure," he says, trying not to smile too broadly.

She beams.

* * *

><p>"Okay, now," Rachel says, dropping her backpack by his bed. "Let's start with some scales to warm up, and then you can perform the song for me, and <em>then<em> we'll focus on how you might be able to improve." She takes a deep breath and opens her mouth to belt out her scales.

"Wait," he says quickly, actually holding up his hand.

She frowns a little. "What's the matter?"

"I . . . I kind of lied to you. I don't really wanna practice the song right now."

"Then . . . why did you want me to come over?" she asks.

"I need to — to talk to you about something. Before you say anything, it's not about Sam! It's about me, and I . . . some stuff's been happening lately, and it's really freaking me out, and you're the only one who can . . . I just —" He groans a little and runs a hand over his hair. He's not doing this right.

"What is it, Finn?" Rachel asks gently. "You know you can always talk to me." She reaches out and takes his hands. "Here," she says. "Sit down on the bed." He does, and she sits beside him, her little legs dangling off. "Tell me," she encourages.

"I've been . . . I've . . . I can travel through time, Rach."

She stares at him. "I'm — I'm sorry?" she finally says.

"Well, like, I mean, it's more like I just randomly travel, you know? I don't actively do anything. It's done _to_ me, if that makes sense. I just wake up, and it's a different random day. Most of the time it's a day during this one week, but one time it was way into the future."

"Finn," she says slowly, "is this some sort of joke?"

"What? No! It's not! Rachel, you have to believe me. You _have_ to. Something's happening to me, and I don't understand, and I _need_ you to help me figure everything out. I've been trying for, like, two weeks now or something, and I can't do it by myself."

She doesn't say anything, but she hasn't stormed out indignantly yet, either.

"It's like this," he says, standing. "A little while ago — I'm not sure how long, 'cause it's really hard to keep track of — but a little while ago, I woke up, and it was prom day. It didn't even seem odd to me. When I woke up the next day, and it was Sunday — like yesterday, Sunday, I mean, I just thought I'd dreamed up prom.

"And Sunday was a totally normal day, and then the next day was Monday, and that was totally normal, too. But then I went to bed, and I woke up, and it was _December_. Like, it was _next_ December. And all this stuff had happened and my life was really messed up.

"Okay, so are you with me so far?"

"I'm with you," she says, nodding.

"So it was this awful day in December, and then I went to bed, and I woke up, and it was prom night. And then I think it was Monday again, but I started getting confused after that. The point is — this is, like, the third time I've lived through this day, and it all happens the same unless _I_ do something different._"_

He's started to pace, but he pauses. "Are you still following?"

Slowly, she nods again.

"Okay, so I've been to Tuesday once, and to Thursday, too, and I've talked with you, and by that time I've told you, and you're trying to help me. But none of it goes properly, and . . . and this is the part where _I_ don't follow anymore. I think, though, I think all this is happening because I'm supposed to change something. I'm supposed to stop what happens on prom night from happening, 'cause . . . 'cause it's kinda bad. Like, nightmarish, ruin-your-life bad."

"I see," Rachel says.

"Yeah, I know, it's crazy and confusing and it makes my head hurt. But at some point I'm gonna live the _real_ Saturday, and then I have to . . . stop what's gonna happen from happening."

"Finn," she says, "this _is_ very confusing — and very, _very_ crazy."

"But you believe me, right?"

She sighs. "I don't . . . I don't _not_ believe you."

She's said that before. "You've said that before!" he exclaims. "Tomorrow — you'll tell me that tomorrow, too!" He pauses. _That's it_! "I can prove it to you," he says, excited.

"Prove it to me?" she says.

He nods eagerly. He spins around. Paper. He needs paper. "I've lived tomorrow already," he explains as he grabs a notebook from his backpack and tears out a piece of paper. "So I'm gonna write a list of stuff that'll happen to you that I'd have _no_ way of knowing ahead of time unless I could time travel, and I'll put it in this envelope, and then you can read it tomorrow and —"

He thinks of the conversation they had before in the cafeteria. She had mentioned an envelope. He was on the right track! He whirled around. "You'll see," he said. "I'll prove it."

"Okay," she tells him.

"Here, watch me," he says. "Look, see, it's a totally blank sheet of paper, and now I'm gonna right some stuff about tomorrow on it."

What should he put?

_You'll forget your lunch for the first time ever, so you'll buy something, but you'll be suspicious of the spinach casserole._ _And you'll go running in the morning, and this song from Wicked will come on, and it'll make you think of Quinn. Plus, you'll wear a green skirt, and a matching green and pink argyle sweater. And you'll get pissed at Mrs. Hannigan, and Sam will tell you it's because she knows that you're smarter than her._

He adds some more about the stupid stuff Mr. Schue will do in Glee, and this one random line that Brittany will say, and he mentions what other people will wear, too, and he tells her that Quinn'll be pissy all day.

He thinks that should be enough. "Okay," he says. "Now, see, I'm just gonna fold it up, and put it in . . . in this envelope here." He grabs the yellow package envelope that video game he ordered from amazon came in two weeks ago. "And I'll — I'll _staple_ it shut."

He holds it out to her proudly. "Look at the paper tomorrow after everything's happened. Like, after school."

Hesitantly, she takes it. "Well," she says, "this certainly isn't what I expected. But, okay, I'll open it tomorrow afternoon." She offers him a small smile. "I should go, though. I have homework and all of that."

"Do you need a ride?" he asks.

She nods, and he walks her downstairs and back out to his truck. The ride is quiet, and he wonders just _how_ crazy she thinks he is right now. But his plan is gonna work. He knows it is. He doesn't take his eyes off the road, 'cause you never know what might jump out in front of your car, but he thinks about that last prom day, and her words.

_"I really want to kiss you right now."_

When he gets to her house, she tells him that he doesn't need to walk her to the door. As she steps out of his truck, though, he can't help himself. "Hey, Rachel?" he asks. She glances back at him. "Are we friends?"

"Do you want to be?" she asks.

"Yeah," he says, nodding.

She smiles. "Then yes. We're friends."

* * *

><p>He has a nightmare that night.<p>

He knows this is a real nightmare. Colors smear and voices loom out of nowhere, and Blaine becomes his mom who becomes that poor mailman and then Kurt screams mailman in a hysterical voice repeatedly while cows start to rain down and Sam turns into a vampire and Rachel flies from the car again and again and again, and she dies again and again and again, and she begs Finn to save her but he just _can't_ and then the cows start a stampede and —

"Finn!" His mom tears back his covers. "You have school! Come on! You'll be late!"

He rubs his eyes. He glances at the clock. It's almost 6:30. He's _definitely _going to be late. But what day is it? "Mom!" he calls. "What's the date? And the day of the week?"

"It is Tuesday, May 24th!" his mother shouts from the hall.

* * *

><p>After today, he'll have Rachel on his side. She'll read his note after everything plays out, and then they'll be able to make sense of everything. Unless . . . yesterday was real, right? He really can't tell anymore.<p>

He goes through the motions of the day, though, and he has that same awkward with conversation with Quinn. He sees Rachel in the cafeteria, poking at her tray of food, and he grins. He sits with Puck and Mike, though, and they all mess around, and he feels normal for the first time in _ages_.

But he _really_ wants to talk to Rachel.

He doesn't like that normal now doesn't involve Rachel.

He waits the day out, though. He goes to Glee practice, and he goes through the motions, and he pretends to care when Mr. Schue announces stuff that Finn's already heard before. He goes for a run after Glee practice ends, just to relieve some stress, but his wrist is _still_ killing him, and he doesn't know what the fuck he did to it.

He must push himself too hard during the run, 'cause his ears pop and stuff afterward.

But he doesn't care. Only like ten minutes after dinner finishes, somebody rings the doorbell. He knows who it is, and he nearly sprints to greet her. She stands on his doorstep nervously, his notebook paper clutched in her hands.

"Hey," he says.

"Hi," she replies. She pauses. "Everything you put in here actually happened." She sounds a little shocked, but he only smiles. "I guess — I guess we should talk."

"Yeah," he says, and he opens the door wider to let her pass into the house.

He leads the way up the stairs and to his room. "I still can't believe this," she says as she sits at his desk and he closes the door. "I mean, I never much read fantasy novels, as I've always enjoyed biographies a great deal more — they're interesting, informative, _and _inspirational — but I still know some of the general theories in pop culture, and . . . wow. You can time travel."

"You really do believe me, then?" he asks, sitting down on his bed.

She nods. "I don't have any other explanation. And, of course, some aspects of the paranormal aren't really so far fetched. You know I have a sixth sense, of course."

"Yeah," he says.

"But you have no control over this, right?" she asks. "You don't choose what happens or which day you end up in?"

"That's right. I wish I could." It's quiet. She tucks one of her feet behind the other, and her fingers fidget a little in her lap. "This is kinda awkward," he says. That's supposed to make things less awkward, right, when you, like, _acknowledge _the awkwardness?

She chuckles a little. "Yes, it is." She pauses. _Shit_. It's totally still awkward. She goes on after a minute, though. "But we really ought to discuss what to do about your situation. Now, there's probably a purpose, and you mentioned that you think it's to give you the ability to change the events of our prom night, right?"

He nods. "Yeah, um, it's kinda really bad. Some — somebody dies."

"Oh," she says, her eyes widening. "Yes, yes, that is bad. But we can prevent it. I know we can." She smiles. "Let's see. Well, how many times have you lived through prom night now?"

"Um, I think three times," he says. "That's right. Three times. And it all goes down exactly the same way. There's, um, a car accident on the way to the school."

"And you've tried to prevent the accident to no avail?"

"Yeah," he says. "I mean, I've . . . I've tried to stop — but she keeps stopping me."

"She keeps stopping you?" Rachel repeats. "Who's she?"

He should just tell her. He _has_ to, doesn't he? "You," he says.

"Me?" she says. "I keep stopping you?"

"Yeah, you." It's the truth. "You keep stopping me."

"But why would I . . . why would I want someone else to die?" She looks legit distressed, and he doesn't really want to have this conversation. But he _needs_ her to have the answers, and she can't if she doesn't even know the fucking question.

"Actually, it's . . . it's you, Rachel." He tries not to sound panicked. The memory of her like that, of the blood, of the shuddering breaths, of the body bag — it tends to freak him out _a lot._

"What do you mean?" she asks.

"You're the one who dies," he says softly.

Her eyes widen. "W-what? _I_ die?"

He nods. "It's awful. And after the first time, I thought it was just a nightmare, but I've relived it twice since then, and both times I tried to talk to you and explain everything to you, but you wouldn't listen and it's like you _knew_ what was gonna happen and you just told me to let it happen, and then you . . . you died."

"I see," she whispers, staring at a spot on the carpet.

"I'm not — I'm not gonna let it happen, Rach," he says quickly. "You gotta know that. I'm not gonna let you die. I mean, I'm not _supposed _to let you die. I think — I think the universe doesn't want you to."

She glances back at him.

"No, seriously," he goes on, "I've been thinking about it. Like, okay, look at this. He grabs a sheet of paper from his backpack, some random homework assignment or something, and a pen from his desk. He draws a line. "This is time," he says. "And for some reason, something happens on prom night that creates this new alternate reality with a new time line. He draws a diagonal line, and then a new line from that.

"And, see, I think the universe is bouncing me from reality to reality so that I can, like, course correct and make sure you don't die and the regular time line goes on." He's kind of proud of his theory.

"That makes some sense," Rachel says slowly.

"Yeah, I got it from _Back to the Future_."

"I've never seen that," she says.

"You should really watch it," he tells her. "It's a good movie. And, now that I think about it — I mean, if I remember right — I'm pretty sure you're gonna watch it soon so we can, like, discuss."

"But, Finn," she says, "in my limited knowledge of time travel, I was also under the impression that time was circular, not linear."

"Yeah, you've said that before. But you never really explained. . . ."

"Time isn't something that happens step by step," she says. "It happens simultaneously. Like, you can't stop a man in San Diego from throwing his shoe at an innocent dog because it's happening right now, even though he's far, far away from you. Similarly, you can't stop a man right here in Lima from throwing his shoe at an innocent dog three weeks from now, because it's happening right now, even though he's, in terms of time, far, far away."

He's not really sure what dogs have to do with anything, but he kinda gets that point.

"But that would mean that you've already died," he says, "and there's nothing I can do to stop it."

She doesn't say anything.

"I _am_ going to stop it, Rach," and he reaches for her hands.

He hasn't held her hands in a long, long time.

She smiles a little. "I believe you," she tells him. "And I'll help. We'll figure this out. This is all so crazy, and I can't believe that the first time we've really spent any time with one another, just the two of us, in some weeks." She sighs. "It's all so complicated, so _insane_, really. And we should be focused on Nationals right now, but this naturally takes precedent."

He nods. "I'm glad, though," he says.

"You're glad?"

"That, like, we're spending time together again. Even if it's for pretty messed up reasons."

She bites her lip. "I'm glad, too."

"Rachel, why — why did we stop?" His voice comes out softer, _sadder _even, than he'd intended.

"I'm not really sure," she says quietly. "You wanted space, and I wanted to give it you, because I thought we both needed to grow and be stars in our own right before — before we might one day be together again. And you took that space, and . . . and that was that."

"Yeah," he says. "I guess I . . . I guess I needed space. But, Rach — Rachel — I don't really want it anymore. I . . . I don't think I have for a long time. I've just been too . . . it's been so awkward and it was just easier to . . . I guess I'm just trying to say that you can totally crowd my space from now on." He pauses. "Okay, maybe that came out wrong."

But she smiles. "You're welcome to crowd my space now, too, Finn."

* * *

><p>Rachel doesn't stay for much longer, but they share a grapefruit down in the kitchen before she leaves, and he thinks about everything she told him. He ends up on Facebook for a while, then, and he skims through old pictures.<p>

He looks at lots that Rachel put up of them.

He's avoided those pictures for a long time. He kinda spends two and a half hours looking at them now, though. And when he finds the one from Glee club where she's leaning against him, smiling slightly as he says something to somebody not in the picture. His hand is, like, automatically reaching for hers. It's just a really good picture.

He leaves a comment.

_This is my favorite._

Barely three minutes later, Rachel adds a comment beneath his.

_Mine, too :)_

* * *

><p>He thinks maybe everything's back to normal when he wakes up.<p>

His mom tells him that it's Wednesday — "Yes, Finn, Wednesday, May 25th" — and he realizes that the day before was Tuesday, and the day before was Monday, and maybe he's finally back on schedule. Maybe all the time travelling stuff has stopped now that he's figured out it's all meant to help him find a way to save Rachel.

And he will find a way.

He gets to school kinda late, but he sees Rachel down the hall after first, and he raises his hand to wave. She catches sight of him and smiles widely, raising her hand to wave, too. And then some fucking _jackass_ throws a slushie in her face.

It goes just like that — Rachel smiles, Finn blinks, and then Rachel's standing there dripping in bright red cherry slushie, her shoulders tight and her face one of unpleasant shock as the people around her chuckle a little. Pissed, Finn shoves his whole backpack into his locker and starts towards her.

But a hand reaches out and grabs him and stops him, and he tears his eyes away from Rachel, who's trying to navigate towards the girl's bathroom a few feet down the hall. It's Quinn. "Leave her," Quinn says.

"What?"

"Rachel," Quinn insists. "Leave her be. She can take care of herself. It's not as if she hasn't had practice."

"Are you kidding?" he exclaims. "I can't just leave her! None of us has been slushied in ages, and I'm not just gonna let her handle it herself. I'm gonna help her, and then I'm gonna, like, knock some heads together or something."

"Actually, you and I are the people who haven't been slushied in ages," she tells him. "You don't think Puck still gets flack for his whole _thing_ with Lauren? You don't think Tina doesn't get slushied every time Mike's not around? You don't think Rachel doesn't get a cold, icy facial every week because she's _Rachel?"_

That just pisses him off more. "Then I'm _definitely_ gonna help her," he says.

"Finn, don't start down this path again!" Her fingers dig into his arm.

"Start down what path?"

She grits her teeth. "We've finally found a balance, Finn, between maintaining popularity and remaining in Glee. Don't mess it up. If you want to go to prom with me, _don't mess it up_." She glares at him, her eyes narrowed with the warning.

"You know, actually," he says, finally yanking his arm free of her, "I don't think I want to go to prom with you." And he stalks off, leaving her gaping behind him, and he feels pretty good about it all. Rachel has a hand on the handle of the bathroom when he reaches her.

"Hey," he murmurs, touching her back gently. "Come on." He leads her into the bathroom, and he helps her wash off, running his hands through her hair to get all the slushie out, and his stomach does all sorts of funny things. She talks about stupid stuff, like she always used to do in these situations, as if she can write it all off as no big deal as long as she talks about, like, her love of cats.

He gets a change of clothes from her locker for her, and then he stays and says he's always liked dogs more as she changes in one of the stalls.

* * *

><p>"So nothing's happened, then?" Rachel asks as they walk through the parking lot.<p>

"Nope," he says. "Your yesterday was my yesterday, too. I think maybe it's stopped."

"Then the next step," she tells him, "is to go through the events of Saturday hour by hour and make a fool proof plan for how we prevent my death. It shouldn't be too difficult, now that we're both on board, but we can't leave anything to chance, of course."

"Definitely," he agrees. "You wanna come over?"

"Actually, I can't tonight. I teach dance to children at the JCC now. I have since March."

"Really? That's cool." He so should have known that. He knows now, though.

"It is pretty fun. I find it fulfilling to inspire a love of dance in children." She smiles. "And after that I'm having dinner with Sam and his family, and then he'll give me another guitar lesson. He's been teaching me for a few weeks now, and he says I'm making real progress!"

She's having dinner with _Sam_'s family, and he's teaching her how to play guitar? Finn's totally not cool with that. _At all._

But she only goes on, oblivious. "I'll try to watch _Back to the Future_ before I go to bed, too." She stops, and he realises they've reached her car. "Thank you for helping me earlier," she says, and her voice has gone soft.

"Sure," he says. "I've got your back."

She bites her lip, gazing up at him. And she leans up suddenly and kisses him gently, simply, chastely. She pulls back. Her cheeks are a little pink. She smiles softly, though. "I'll see you tomorrow, Finn," she says.

He just nods, 'cause he's kinda speechless, or whatever.

He goes over to his car, and he knows — he _knows_ why he avoided hanging out with her again, even just being her friend, for so long. He's totally falling in love with her all over again. (Did he ever fall _out_ of love with her?) He wants to kiss her again. He wants to hold her hand in the halls. He wants her to lean into him at Glee practice.

He wants to take her to prom.

But what about her? Is she falling in love with him? He can't be with her again if she doesn't feel the same way about him that he feels about her — they've done that before, and he _barely_ got over it, if he ever really did. He sighs as he tosses his backpack into his truck and climbs in. He'll figure this all out later. He needs to focus on this Saturday.

First, he'll save her life. And _then_ he'll see if there's a chance she could love him someday.

* * *

><p>"Finn, sweetie, you need to wake up." Her hand runs over his face, brushing through his hair softly, and his eyes flicker open groggily.<p>

"What's the matter, Mom?" he mutters.

"You need to wake up," she repeats gently. "We need to go soon."

He looks over at her. She's done something pretty with her hair, she has make-up on, and she's wearing a black dress. "Go where?" he asks. Doesn't he have school? He glances over at the clock. It's almost ten in the morning. He must not have school.

That means today isn't Thursday.

He's in some other random day. Apparently, the time travel hasn't stopped.

"Oh, sweetie," his mom says, and she gives him that strained smile she always uses when she's trying not to cry. "You want to go, I know you do, even if you don't feel like it now. You'll regret it later if you don't."

"Go where, Mom?" he insists, his stomach sinking even as he asks.

"The funeral."

He just stares. She leans forward and kisses his forehead. "Get dressed. I've laid out a suit for you. I'll be downstairs, and we're all ready to go when you are." She stands slowly and leaves the room, glancing back one last time to smile sadly at him.

He's supposed to go to a funeral today.

It's not Rachel's, is it? Please. _Please_.

He gets out of bed and dresses quickly, and he tries to comb his hair a little. He has a five o'clock shadow, his eyes are rimmed in red, and he has, like, actual purple smudges under his eyes. He's woken up in a time where it looks like he doesn't sleep or shave or . . . _Oh, God._

It's totally Rachel's funeral.

He can't do this.

But he goes downstairs. He looks at the calendar before he looks at anybody else in the room.

Just like always, his mom has all the previous days marked off. Today is May 31st. Today's a few days after prom, a few days after Rachel's death. Burt rests a hand on Finn's shoulder. "Come on, kid," he says. Finn doesn't say anything as he goes out to the car with his mom, Burt, and Kurt, and he pretends not to see as Kurt wipes away silent tears again and again.

Finn doesn't cry.

Because Rachel isn't dead yet, not really. He still has the chance to save her.

It's bright and sunny out at the cemetery. Finn's pretty sure it's not supposed to be like that.

Everybody Finn knows is there. Mr. and Mr. Berry are there, and they're surrounded by people that look like relatives — Finn thinks one of them might be Mr. Berry's sister, who Rachel has a picture of in her room. Her aunt Ruthie, he thinks. All the Glee kids are there, too, and they're all crying — even Quinn. Mrs. Puckerman has an arm around Puck, who looks like he hasn't slept or shaved or done anything much at all since prom, like Finn.

Finn didn't really understand the service, and he doesn't understand much of what happens now, either, but he stares at her casket and he finds that he _is_ crying, because this is Rachel's _funeral_. He shouldn't be here. This is _way_ too fucked up.

He goes forward to drop dirt onto the casket. He doesn't want to, but both Mr. Berrys do, and then they look at Finn, like it's only right that he goes next. He stumbles forward, takes a fistful of dirt, and then let his hand hover over her casket. He can't do this. He can't.

Again, Burt touches a hand to his shoulder. "It's okay, son," he murmurs.

It's really not. But Finn drops the dirt, and he lets Burt walk him back to his seat.

He stays in bed the rest of the day, and nobody bothers him. He plans out how he's gonna save Rachel. He figures out all the details. It's gonna work. This won't ever really happen — circular time can go fuck itself.

Kurt knocks on Finn's door a little after eleven. "I can't sleep," Kurt says, eyes downcast.

"Me neither," Finn admits.

"I don't want to bother my father or Carole, and I've already leaned too much on Mercedes, and. . . ." Kurt rambles slightly, which reminds Finn of Rachel.

"Hey, it's cool," Finn says, and he pulls back some of his sheets and scoots to one side of the bed. "There's gotta be something on television we can watch." He finds Jon Stewart, and they watch that, and Finn doesn't really care when Kurt leans into him a little. They're brothers, aren't they?

Kurt doesn't realize that Rachel isn't really dead yet. So Finn lets him have this one.

He's not sure when he finally falls asleep.

* * *

><p>Finn wakes up before his alarm can go off. The clock says it's a little past five in the morning. He goes downstairs. According to the calendar, it's the day of prom — <em>again.<em>

Fan-fucking-tastic.

He goes back upstairs and tries to go back to sleep. He can't. He's gonna prove today that he _can_ save Rachel when the real prom night comes. Hell, maybe this even _is_ the real prom night. He gives up on sleep around six thirty, and he takes a really long shower, almost an hour, until he hears the sounds of his mom in the kitchen.

He goes down to breakfast and asks if maybe she'll make him chocolate chip pancakes. Those are his favourite, and he could _really_ use a pick-me-up. She agrees, and she asks him happily if he's excited for tonight. "Quinn's Mom got you a limo, didn't she?" she asks.

"I don't wanna go with Quinn," Finn says gruffly. "I wanna go with Rachel."

His mom doesn't say anything. He doesn't really expect her to. He just eats his pancakes and doesn't make anything else more awkward for her. He leaves as soon as he's finished. He starts the drive to Rachel's house, but when he realizes that it's almost nine in the morning now, he changes course. He knows Rachel, okay? She won't still be in bed.

He gets to Tina's, and he pounds on the door loudly until Mercedes tears it open. "Damn, white boy, it's bad enough that Rachel made us all get up to get ready at the _crack_ of dawn!" But her anger disappears a little as he glares at her.

"I need to talk to Rachel."

"Yeah, okay," Mercedes says hesitantly. "Hold on."

It takes forever, just like it did last time, but Rachel comes out eventually. Her hair's in a messy ponytail, and she doesn't look thrilled to see him. "You shouldn't be here, Finn," she says. "You know that." He doesn't get this. If their talk from Tuesday really happened, and he thinks it really did, then why is she acting like this?

"I don't know that," he tells her. "And don't talk to me about pieces and slam the door in my face again. We need to talk." He pauses. "Let me take you to breakfast or something."

"I really can't, Finn," she protests. "You need to leave." She starts to shut the door on him.

And he goes for broke. He grabs her waist and yanks her up and over his shoulder. "Yeah, no," he says, "we're going to breakfast."

"Finn!" she screams, smacking his back, and her little fists are surprisingly painful. "This is absolutely outrageous — completely and utterly _barbaric_! Put me down _this instant_!"

"Nope."

"Help! Help me! I'M BEING KIDNAPPED!"

"Yeah, nobody cares," he tells her, and he opens his truck and tries to push her in as gently as he can. It's kinda hard, 'cause the crazy girl's kicking and punching wildly, and, yeah, he's gonna have some bruises. She scrambles along the seat in an attempt to escape, but he doesn't let her. He climbs in, blocks her escape attempts with an arm that forces her back against the seat, and then he starts up the car with his left hand.

"This is _ridiculous_," she hisses.

"You're right. So can you just behave for five minutes and go to breakfast with me?" he asks, glaring at her.

She glares back, her jaw locked, before she snaps, "Fine. Have it your way."

He cautiously draws his arm back, and she grabs the seat belt viciously and slams it into the buckle. She crosses her arms over her chest, then, and glares out the windshield, muttering something darkly under his breath.

Victorious, he puts the truck into reverse and pulls out of Tina's driveway.

* * *

><p>Her takes her to this weird diner that only serves green mush and stuff like that. He hates this place. She loves it, though, and he's already had breakfast, so whatever. They don't talk as they sit down, and she refuses to look at him.<p>

"Okay," he says. "So you know you're gonna die, right?"

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," she replies coolly, finally looking over at him. "Can I leave now?"

"Rachel, c'mon_,_" he murmurs, pleading a little. Why is she acting like this?

She sighs. "Finn, don't do this, okay? Don't make it harder than it needs to be."

"Don't make you _dying_ hard?" he says, incredulous.

But there's a plea in her eyes now, too. "We talked about this!" she says.

"No," he tells her, shaking his head. "I haven't. Not in your time, anyway. Look, I think there's, like, — there's real time, and then there's special time. And I think the week's slowly passing in real time, and I'm, like, jumping back and forth between real time and special time. And you only live in real time, but I haven't lived all of real time left, so, like, if we talked about this yesterday, then I don't remember, 'cause there's nothing _to _remember, 'cause I haven't lived that yet!"

He's not sure that makes any sense. _Nothing_ makes sense any more, and it's driving him crazy.

"I understand," she says softly. "You've explained that to me before. But, okay, when is the last part of — of _real_ time that you have lived?"

"Um . . . Wednesday. Or maybe just Tuesday. I'm not sure."

"Not Thursday?" There's something different in her voice.

"What happens on Thursday?" he asks.

A waitress comes over to the table. Finn's kind of annoyed, but there's nothing he can do. He orders a coke and Rachel orders tea, and then he stares across the table and repeats his question. "What happens on Thursday?"

"I think you're supposed to wait and see," she finally answers.

"It's gotta be something pretty big, if suddenly you're all ready just to _die._"

"I'm not ready to die," she says.

"You're sure acting like it!" he exclaims.

"Don't _shout_ at me," she tells him. "I'm doing this _for_ you."

"You're dying for me? I didn't ask you do that — I'm not asking you to do that. Rachel, _please_." He reaches for her hand, half expecting her to pull away, but she lets him grasp her hand, she lets him weave their fingers together.

"It's not that simple," she says softly. "But you can't live like this, Finn. You can't live trapped in one place, unable to move forward, to move on. And the only way you can move on is if you let happen what's going to happen."

"If I let you die, you mean," he says. "Do you not even believe me? Do you not think you're gonna die? 'Cause I've _seen_ it, Rach. I've seen it, and it's gonna happen, unless you let me stop it, unless you _help_ me stop it."

"Finn, that's just it — you _can't _stop it, not even if I try to help you. Time's circular. It's not like in _Back to the Future._ We've talked about this some already, I know we have."

"Then what's the point of all this?" he asks, his voice breaking a little. The waitress comes back with their drinks, but she hurries away again, as if she knows that she's interrupting something.

"Finn, you don't know it yet, but the next few days — in real time, I mean — they change my life," she says. "And they're some of the best days I've ever had, despite everything. I don't know how to make you okay with this. Because, you know, honestly, maybe I don't _really_ think it's real. But I know that I wouldn't take back anything that's happened.

"And I know that you need all of this to — to realize how smart you are, and how strong you are, and how — how _amazing_ you are. Maybe that's the point. Maybe you need this so that you can realize that — that bad things happen, terrible things happen, and you have to find a way past them, even when you can't fix them."

She runs her thumb gently across the back of his hand.

"I'm not willing to pay for a lesson," his says, his voice low, "that costs me _you_."

"Don't you get it, Finn?" She smiles a little sadly. "This is the lesson that brought me back to you." She blinks, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. She stands, though, and she comes around the table before he can stop her. She reaches out and cups his face.

"Trust me," she whispers. She leans forward and kisses his forehead, lingering for a moment. "I need you to do this for me, Finn. Please do me this one last thing." Her voice is muffled against his skin, a whisper that's somehow distant. She draws back after a moment, and he watches her walk away — doesn't she need a ride? But she pulls out her cell as she goes, and he just sits there.

He goes home eventually. He blows off Kurt. He calls Quinn and cancels on her. She goes ballistic, but he really doesn't care. He lies in bed and plays stupid video games all afternoon, and he doesn't budge when Kurt _begs_ him to come over to Tina's for pictures.

He falls asleep at some point, and he wakes when his cell goes off.

It's around nine at night. It's Kurt calling. Finn knows what he'll say. But he picks up the phone anyway. It's actually Blaine on the other line. "Finn?" he says. "It's Blaine. I'm calling because Kurt can't, and I thought — I thought somebody should let you know."

"Okay," Finn says.

"It's Rachel, Finn," Blaine says. "There was an accident, and . . . " Blaine seems unable to say the words. "I'm so sorry, Finn, but Rachel — she — oh, God, maybe I shouldn't have just called you liked this. You shouldn't hear this from me."

"It's okay, Blaine," Finn says dully.

"Rachel died, Finn," Blaine breathes.

Finn just hangs up the phone and goes back to sleep.

* * *

><p>"Hey Mom," he says.<p>

"It's Thursday," she replies.

"The 26th?" he asks.

"Of May," she says, nodding.

Rachel said this day was important. Or she implied it, or something. He's lived Thursday before, he thinks, but everything's sorta starting to blur together. Obviously, though, nothing big happened, or he would remember it, right?

He sees Rachel at her locker when he arrives at school. He wants to catch her before he goes to homeroom, so he tries to shove everything into his locker as quickly as he can. When he slams his locker shut and turns toward hers, though, he nearly runs into her.

"Hey, so I've done some more research," she says, a shy smile on her face.

"Research?" he repeats.

"Mmm-hmm. Well, I watched _Back to the Future, _as you asked. I actually thought it was rather amusing, I'll admit. But I found the doc's explanation for time travel to be _vastly_ incorrect. I can understand why he sold you on his theory, though, because it's so simple, and we always want a simple explanation — it's a natural human inclination. I mean, isn't that what's behind Occam's Razor?"

"Um, yeah," he says, and then his eyes go wide, because _holy shit_ they've had this conversation before, this, like, _exact_ conversation.

"So, as I said before, time really isn't _linear_. It's circular. And you can travel around that circle, but you can't change any part of it, as what's going to happened has already happened. I've drawn up a picture for you — I think I can explain it to you in the same sort of terms the doc uses." She starts to rustle through her backpack.

"You wanna ditch homeroom?" he asks randomly. She looks up in surprise. "I mean, like, we gotta talk about this and stuff. So let's go out to the bleachers. Nobody'll be out there right now." He shrugs a little. And, to his surprise, she agrees.

They go out through the cafeteria doors. "I feel like such a _rebel_," she tells him, sounding a little delighted with herself, and he laughs.

"Yeah, Puck's got nothing on you," he tells her, and she shoves him playfully.

"Okay," she says as they sit down. "Now, this circle here is time. This random point is today. This random point is Saturday, is prom night. See, there's no start and finish, and no way to deviate off into another random circle."

"But," he says, and he takes the pen from her, "can't you just, like, leave the circle and start a new one?" and he draws another circle that just touches with hers at the point she's labelled Thursday.

"But that would create an entirely new future _and_ an entirely new past. They would create a universe completely separate from ours except for this one day. The consequences could be astronomical!"

He stares.

"I may have also done some research in the form of a several hours viewing of the Sci Fi channel," she adds lightly. He starts to laugh at her. "It was _necessary_!" He only laughs harder, and she huffs and crosses her arms over chest. "Can we move on? I've looked over the timeline, and I think I understand how it works."

"The timeline?"

"That we made yesterday," she says, pulling another piece of paper out of her backpack.

"Right, that one," he says. He leans forward to see their timeline. He can smell her perfume, some sweet, flowery scent that she's _always_ worn, and he almost wants to press his face closer to her and take a big whiff. That might freak her out, though. He focuses on the time — "Circle," he says. "It's a timecircle."

"I re-did it last night," she explains.

"Okay, cool." He thinks it would be a whole lot easier to read as a straight line, but Rachel seems to have a thing for circles, so whatever. "So . . . so there's real time, and there's special time, I think. But how do we figure out which is which?" he asks. "You know, I still don't really get how any of this works."

"I'm not entirely sure, either," she says. "I have a theory, though. Every day is supposed to play out a certain way, and you only progress forward in real time when the day you live in plays out correctly. If it doesn't, then time jumps you to some random day. So, Sunday played out correctly, and then Monday came, but it didn't play out correctly, so you jumped around until you came back to Monday, and then it _did_ play out correctly, so you went on to real time Tuesday, and so on."

"And you only live in real time days, so, like, if today doesn't play out right, or whatever, then you won't remember any of this?" he asks.

"I think," she says slowly. "And this might not even be in real time, because I don't know if you've successfully progressed from Wednesday, although according to our timecircle I think you've successfully lived Tuesday in real time."

He's so lost it's not even funny. She glances over at him, and she smiles a little.

"Look, until we have any concrete ideas, here's the plan: try to let things play out the way you think they ought to. For now, don't mess with any prom related events."

"What does that mean?" he asks.

"I mean, for example, who's your date to prom?"

"I don't. . . ."

"You keep re-living prom night," she says, "and obviously each night is much the same unless _you_ change something. So, in this apparently standard night, who's your date?" She pauses. "Do we — do we go together?" Her voice goes soft.

"Actually, um, I'm usually with Quinn."

"Oh." She looks away. "Okay. Of course. I should have. . . . I'll add that to our notes. So, now, this means don't do anything that would prevent your date with Quinn, because we can't afford to change anything until we've determined what _must_ change."

"Yeah," he says quietly, watching her carefully, "sure."

"Well," she says, and she starts to put away her papers, "we really should go. I'm sure first period has already started, and the later we are, the more embarrassing it'll be." She stands.

"Okay," he says, standing up, too. "You wanna meet up for lunch and talk more?"

"I'm supposed to meet Sam, actually," she says. They start down the bleachers. "And then we have Glee practice, and then I have a guitar lesson with Sam after. I don't think we can meet again tonight. But we'll talk more tomorrow."

He knows what this is. He knows her well enough to get it.

"Hey," he finally says, just as they enter the school and start to turn in opposite directions. "We're friends again, right?" He knows he's asked before, but he wants to ask again. He needs to remind her. She nods, smiling a little. And he can't help it. He goes on. "I really hate that we ever became not friends."

She bites her lip. "Me, too," she says. "But I guess it isn't as easy to be friends once you fall out of love as it is to be friends while you fall in love."

"Yeah," he says. She starts to walk away, but her words slowly prick his conscious. "Rachel!" She glances back again. He licks his lip and forces the question out. "Did you really love me?"

She tilts her head at him, smiling a little as if that were a silly question. "Of course I did. I've never loved anybody like I loved you." A beat passes, she leaves, and he tries not to let her words terrify him.

(He hasn't really been wrong about everything, has he?)

* * *

><p>"Hey Mom, what's —?"<p>

"Wednesday, May 25th." She doesn't even look up.

He nods a little to himself and then pours himself a bowl of Cap'n Crunch. Okay, so is this real time? That means he has to try to do the day right. Rachel told him not to mess with anything until they figured more out, but she won't remember that, will she? What does she remember?

When she came by his house on Tuesday night, right?

He wishes he could look at her timecircle, but he's pretty sure that doesn't exist yet.

Standing by his locker, he sees Rachel in the hall. He waves, and she smiles broadly and starts to wave, too, before she's suddenly slushied, and he swears he can _hear_ her gasp. The people around her only laugh a little as she stands there, dripping in bright red cherry slushie, and he _hates_ that he's seen this all before, that he has to see it _twice_, that he _ever_ has to see it.

He shoves his backpack into his locker, slams the door shut, and starts towards her.

But a hand reaches out and grabs him and stops him, and he remembers exactly who it is even as he spins around to face her. "Leave her," Quinn says. He stares furiously at her. She isn't intimidated. "Rachel," Quinn goes on sharply. "_Leave_ her be. She can take care of herself. It's not as if she hasn't had practice."

"Don't be mean," he snaps. "I'm not just gonna let her go through that by herself."

"Unless you want to be the next recipient, you better," she tells him. "Just because you and I haven't been slushied in months, doesn't mean the slushies have stopped. You don't think Puck still gets flack for his whole _thing_ with Lauren? You don't think Tina doesn't get slushied every time Mike's not around? You don't think Rachel doesn't get a cold, icy facial every week because she's _Rachel?"_

She gave him a similar speech last time. "I don't care if I get slushied again," he snarls.

He knows Quinn's just dealing with all the same, like, insecurities and stuff that they all have to deal with and this is her way of handling it all, but he _hates_ that she has to be such a big bitch to make herself feel better. No matter how bad she's had it in high school, Rachel's never been mean to other people.

"Finn, don't start down this path again!" Her fingers dig into his arm.

"Start down what path?" But he remembers the answer even as he speaks.

She grits her teeth. "We've finally found a balance, Finn, between maintaining popularity and remaining in Glee. Don't mess it up. If you want to go to prom with me, _don't mess it up_." She glares at him, her eyes narrowed with the warning.

"You know, actually," he says, finally yanking his arm free of her, and then he pauses. Rachel told him not to mess with prom events. Does this count? He glances down the hall, and he sees Rachel tentatively press her hand to the bathroom door. He can't just leave her to handle that by herself.

But —

"What?" Quinn says sharply.

"Fine," he tells her. He can't look at her, though, and he definitely can't look in Rachel's direction.

"Good," she says, and her whole demeanor seems to soften slightly. "My mom's already agreed to pay for a limo. All you need to remember is to pick up my corsage. I already ordered it and everything."

"Um, okay," he says.

She smiles and flounces off, then, and he slowly treks to the girls' bathroom. The hall's nearly cleared out, and he hopes he doesn't look like a creep or anything as he pushes open the door and slips in. He finds Rachel washing her hair out over the sink.

"Hey," he says softly.

She freezes for a moment, but she relaxes almost instantly. "Hello, Finn," she says.

"Sorry I didn't come by earlier," he tells her. "Quinn wouldn't let me." She doesn't respond, and he freaks out a little, so he quickly goes on. "Like, I wanted to, but yesterday I lived through Thursday, and you told me that I had to make sure for now that I didn't change any of the events from prom — at least, I mean, until we know more. So I couldn't mess with Quinn, 'cause. . . ."

"Because you're taking her to prom?" Rachel asks, straightening slightly. He barely has time to do more than stand and look guilty before she smiles a little. "That's fine, Finn," she says, and she honestly doesn't seem mad. See? Rachel's just _nice_. "Could you go to my locker and bring me a fresh change of clothes?" she asks. "You know the combination, right?"

He nods quickly, glad he can still help her. "I'll be right back."


	3. Chapter 3

He drives Rachel home after school, and he explains everything they went over yesterday. Well, his yesterday, which was really Thursday, but she won't ever remember, 'cause it's not, like, a real day and —

"I understand, Finn, I promise," Rachel says. "Now, you said something about a timecircle?"

"Yeah, yesterday, I mean, Thursday, or whatever, you said we have made one the night before. So that's tonight, right?"

"Right," she says, nodding. "We better make one now, then!"

They list everything that happens to him, and it kinda makes his head hurt a little to try to remember it all, and remember the order of dates he's travelled to and what happened when and everything, but they get it all down eventually, and Rachel gets really excited.

They eat dinner with her dads, then, both of whom ask Finn all sorts of questions about his life lately and seem _thrilled_ that he's back — the one with glasses even says, "Oh, Finn, I'm so _thrilled_ you're back! It's been absolutely _ages_ since you've been by for dinner!"

He just sorta nods and says he's glad to be back, too.

Rachel beams.

He leaves after dinner, and he feels pretty good about the whole day. Finally, stuff's happening, and he actually thinks it might all work out.

Then Mr. Schue makes everybody in Glee where sweater vests and Rachel juggles eggs and cows break into the choir room and then Sam's turning in circles shouting for Finn to fix everything because it's _his_ fault and Rachel's sprawled across the ground, gasping and gasping and gasping, dying and dying and dying, and Finn lies down by her grave and cries and doesn't even stop Kurt when he starts to sing _I'll Raise You Up_ dressed in a sweater vest.

When Finn wakes up abruptly at three in the morning, all he really remembers is the gasping and the dying. He can't fall back asleep for another few hours.

* * *

><p>It's Thursday again. That's good, right? The week's, like, moving forward.<p>

But, hold up, maybe that's _bad_. 'Cause he still hasn't figured out how he's actually gonna save Rachel. He told her last night when they wrote the timecircle that her future self on Saturday completely refuses to help him and just tells him again and again the he has to let it happen. She'd been really quiet and hadn't really offered up any suggestions.

So what's he gonna do?

He remembers, though, as he drives to school, that today something important's supposed to happen, right? That's what Rachel said they last time he lived prom night. She approaches him when he's at his locker before homeroom. "Hey, so I've done some more research," she says, a shy smile on her face.

"Research?" he repeats, and he almost smiles, because he feels like this conversation's becoming a script that he can just whip out.

"Mmm-hmm. Well, I watched _Back to the Future, _as you asked. I actually thought it was rather amusing, I'll admit. But I found the doc's explanation for time travel to be _vastly_ incorrect. I can understand why he sold you on his theory, though, because it's so simple, and we always want a simple explanation — it's a natural human inclination. I mean, isn't that what's behind Occam's Razor?"

"Definitely," he says. He should probably look up that razor thing.

"So, as I said before, time really isn't _linear_. It's circular. And you can travel around that circle, but you can't change any part of it, as what's going to happened has already happened. I've drawn up a picture for you — I think I can explain it to you in the same sort of terms the doc uses." She starts to rustle through her backpack.

He thinks back to last Thursday. Maybe this isn't what's supposed to happen, but he doesn't see why it wouldn't be right. Plus, he totally doesn't want to go to class. "You wanna ditch homeroom?" he asks. She looks up in surprise. "I mean, like, we gotta talk about this and stuff. So let's go out to the bleachers. Nobody'll be out there right now." He shrugs a little.

And she agrees, just like he knew she would.

They go out through the cafeteria doors. "I feel like such a _rebel_," she tells him, all the same delight in her voice.

"Yeah, Puck's got nothing on you," he teases, and she shoves him playfully.

"Okay," she says as they sit down. "Now, this circle here is time. This random point is today. This random point is Saturday, is prom night. See, there's no start and finish, and no way to deviate off into another random circle."

"And we can't just create a new circle because that would create a whole new future and a whole new past, which be like a whole new world, and that could mess up the universe and stuff," he says, trying not to grin too widely.

"Exactly!" she exclaims. She pauses. She narrows her eyes a little. "Have you lived this day before?"

"Maybe," he says. "So how was the Sci Fi channel?" He doesn't bother to suppress his grin, then.

"It was _necessary_!" she exclaims indignantly, and he laughs as she huffs and crosses her arms over chest. "Can we move on? I've looked over the timeline, and I think I understand how it works." He nods and leans toward her as she pulls the paper out.

He can smell her perfume again. He risks a little sniff. And, yeah, he's totally stealth about it.

"I re-did it last night," she tells him, "as I think a circle would really make more sense."

"Sure." He _still_ thinks it would be a whole lot easier to read as a straight line, but Rachel likes her circles.

"Now here's my theory," she says. "Every day is supposed to play out a certain way, and you only progress forward in real time when the day you live in plays out correctly. If it doesn't, then time jumps you to some random day. So, Sunday played out correctly, and then Monday came, but it didn't play out correctly, so you jumped around until you came back to Monday, and then it _did_ play out correctly, so you went on to real time Tuesday, and so on."

"And you only live in real time days, so, like, if today doesn't play out right, or whatever, then you won't remember any of this?" he asks, and he thinks the fact that he listens to these conversations more than once, like, helps send the message home.

"I think," she says. "Of course, now the question is if you're in real time today? Have you successfully lived through Wednesday?"

"I think I did yesterday," he says, nodding.

"Good! Now, let's see. . . ." She looks over the timecircle. "Well, I think until we have any concrete ideas, here's the plan: try to let things play out the way you think they ought to. For now, don't mess with any prom related events."

"Yeah, see, I don't think that's the best plan," he argues. "I mean, that's what I did yesterday, and maybe that was right thing to do, but . . . but like, if the week's really progressing, Rach, then we're getting closer to Saturday, and I don't want . . . I don't want you to die. We gotta put a _real_ plan together. We gotta figure out how we'll stop this."

"What do you suggest?" she asks quietly.

"I don't know," he says, shrugging a little. "I mean, I was kinda hoping you'd have something. You always know what to do."

"Oh, Finn," she says, shaking her head a little, and she suddenly looks so _sad_ that he feels like he's missing something. "If I knew how . . ." She takes a deep breath and gazes out at the empty football field.

"Hey," he says gently, taking her hand. "We're gonna figure this out. You're not gonna die."

She glances back at him, smiling gently. "I know." She squeezes his hand.

"Um, okay, okay, how about this? I got an idea," he says. It makes sense, doesn't it? "What if we go to prom together?" he asks. She only stares, waiting for more. "Like, I mean, I told Quinn I'd go with her, but I really don't want to. And, I mean, if you go with me, then we can just, like, take a different road to the school, or something, and make sure you're not in the accident."

Plus, he thinks to himself, then you'd be _my_ date, like you _should_ be.

But he's not gonna say that aloud. It might freak her out or something.

"I, um —"

He sees her swallow. Why is she hesitating? Does she _not_ want to go with him, just 'cause it's _him_ or whatever? 'Cause she's scared? Nervous, he offers another solution. "Or we could just not go at all," he says. "We could just hang out and watch movies in my basement or something. In fact, like, that'd probably be a better guarantee that nothing'd happen."

"Finn," she says, "I've already accepted an offer to attend prom with someone else."

He doesn't know what to say. He finally manages something, though. "Sam?"

Slowly, she nods. "He asked me this morning when he gave me a ride to school. He was really sweet about it, actually. There was this Katy Perry song on the radio, and he —"

"You can't go with him," Finn interrupts. He doesn't want to hear about how _sweet_ Sam Evans was when he asked her to be his date to prom. He doesn't want to hear about how sweet Sam Evans was _ever_.

"Finn," she says, a silent _be reasonable_ tacked on.

"It happens in his car, Rachel! You fly through the windshield of _his_ car! He's the fucking moron who gets you killed!" She can't seriously be talking like this, can she?

"It's not his fault!" she protests. "You said a car runs a red light and slams into his Volvo! That's certainly not _Sam's_ fault!"

"But you're still in _his_ car as _his_ date when you get killed! You _can't _go with him." He's nearly screaming.

"Then I'll ask him to take a different route to prom. Wouldn't that work?" She looks at him as if she's _daring_ him to argue. She's on her feet now — he is, too — and she has a hand on her hip.

"No! I mean — it _might_, but why risk it?"

"You just don't like Sam," she accuses.

"You're damn right I don't!" he says. "He's a fucking douche!"

"_Finn_!"

"It's the truth, Rachel. He treated Quinn like _crap_ —"

"This is about _Quinn?"_

"No, but —"

"And in case you forgot, Finn Hudson, Quinn cheated on _Sam_. She broke _his_ heart. You should recall all this very clearly, as she cheated on Sam with _you_." She glares fiercely at him.

He feels bad about that, he does. "I'm sorry," he mutters. "I was an ass about that, I know. But — but Rachel, Sam's still not — I mean, why do you even _want_ to go with him?" He realizes there's some kind of plea in his voice now, and he must sound pathetic, but, damn it, he always ends up like this around her.

And he wants her back. He can admit that. He knows it. He wants to save her life, and he wants her back, for real, for _good_.

"Because I _like_ him, Finn!" she exclaims.

"What, as a friend?" he asks, almost a little desperate.

"No, Finn, I —" She falters for the first time. "I — I have feelings for him." She looks apologetic now. But he doesn't want her to look apologetic. He wants her not to stand there and tell him she has a crush on Sam _fucking_ Evans.

"You can't," he says. "You can't."

"And why not?" she demands.

"Because — because —" He searches wildly for the right reason, for the reason that'll make her see she's just not _supposed_ to be with Sam, because she's supposed to be with _Finn_. But he can't say that, and he can't think of a good excuse fast enough, and — "Because he's gonna get you killed!"

"It's not his fault!" she shouts, stomping her foot.

"You don't know that," he argues angrily, "you haven't seen it. _I_ have. And I don't want to see it again. So just, like, _listen_ to me. I'm doing this to save your life!" Frustrated, he runs his hand through his hair.

She glares up at him, taking slow, heavy breaths, her chest heaving. "Why is it," she hisses, "that _you_'re the one who's meant to save me, exactly? We haven't even been friends, been _anything_, for months! All you've done these last few months is _hurt_ me! You ignored me and abandoned me in a tree lot, and you patted my head and told me you _believed_ in me, even though you didn't want to spend any actual time with me. You wouldn't forgive me for kissing Puck out of jealousy and anger — you were too busy swapping _spit_ with the girl who _slept_ with Puck and then _lied _to you for months.

"You abandoned me, Finn, and you ignored me, and you _broke my heart_!" She takes a shaky breath, and tears have gathered in her eyes. She goes on, though. "But, what, now the universe wants _you_ to save my life, is that it? Why, Finn? Why _you_? Before this week, I meant _nothing_ to you. We weren't even friends. So why you?"

He has to say something.

He has to say _something_.

He has to tell her that . . . that before this week, she meant to him what she's always meant to him — _everything_. That's what she means to him now, and what she meant to him before, and —

"Don't worry, Finn," she says, her voice cold. "I don't need you to save my life. Thank you for the warning, but I can handle the situation myself now. You're off the hook." She grabs her backpack from the ground and turns away from him.

"Rachel," he says, his mind screaming at him to say something else, something _more_, something to stop her from walking away like he always lets her do.

"_Don't_, Finn," she snaps, and she storms down the bleachers and away from him.

How does this always happen to them? She screams, she cries, he gapes and has no words, and she storms off, straight into the arms of someone else. How does this keep repeating? How can he never change _this_?

He tries to talk to her again at lunch, but she has Sam firmly at her side, and he's afraid to approach her. What if she tears him to pieces right there in the middle of the cafeteria? He tries to catch her as she leaves school, but that doesn't work, either. He calls her. He texts her. He calls again.

What the _fuck_ has he done?

He goes to bed with the phone clutched in his hand, waiting for a reply that never comes.

* * *

><p>Kurt wakes him. "Are you excited?"<p>

Finn kind of wants to cry.

He doesn't know what to do. His mind keeps circling back to his fight with Rachel, and he wonders if that's where it all went wrong — if she tells him to leave her be and let everything play out on Saturday because of their fight on Thursday. She did say Thursday was important.

But that _couldn't_ be it. It wouldn't make any sense. There was still a piece missing.

Besides, if that fight had been the cause of everything that came next, if that was _supposed_ to happen, then the day would have played out right, and it would be Friday today, the _real_ Friday, not Saturday yet again.

Frustrated, he goes for a run, trying to work out what to do. He should talk to Rachel again. He should _make_ her give him some answers. If she would just _tell_ him what's supposed to happen on Thursday and on Friday and how everything ends up the way it does, then he'd actually be able to _do_ something.

He starts to grow desperate when he's run six miles, taken an hour long shower, and stared at the wall for another solid hour and he _still_ has no idea what to do. He tries to call Rachel a few times, and he even texts her, but she doesn't pick up or respond. He's not surprised.

His feet drag as Kurt ushers him out of the house, but it's not like there's anything else he can do. Everyone is at Tina's, _just like always_, smiling and laughing and whirling around for this picture and that picture, and Finn wants to shout and to tear all his hair out and to make Rachel just _look_ at him. She won't. She looks happily at Sam, though, and Finn glowers.

And then he comes up with the most awesome plan _ever_.

He manages to sneak off — only Kurt sees him leave, and he tells Kurt that he left his cell in the car and he wants to grab it before the limo comes and he forgets. Kurt totally buys it. But Finn doesn't fetch his cellphone. No, totally stealth-like, he lets the air out of one of Sam's tires.

He comes back to the group, he poses for a picture, and he waits.

Sam totally freaks out when he realizes one of his tires is flat, and everybody's sympathetic, but everybody's also got dinner reservations and other rides and no one has time to help him change the tire with a spare that nobody has. Finn's feeling pretty fucking good when Kurt and Blaine benevolently offer to let Sam and Rachel ride with them.

The plan totally worked.

Of course, he wishes Sam and Rachel could ride in the limo with him and Quinn, but Quinn would completely lose her shit, and he wouldn't even have a good excuse to offer them a ride, 'cause Quinn apparently made reservations at some different, fancy restaurant even though _everybody_ else is going to Breadstix.

Plus, Rachel's kinda pissed at Finn. As soon as Sam declares that his tire's flat, Rachel's eyes fly to Finn, and she purses her lips. She totally knows. He only blinks innocently at her, though, and she glowers, crossing her arms over her chest. She's still seething when she climbs into the back of Blaine's car, and Finn thinks it might be freaking out Sam a little, like he thinks she's pissed at him.

Finn's definitely not going to correct him.

* * *

><p>Despite his success, Finn still freaks out a little when the limo starts the drive to the school.<p>

He's sweating, and he's doing a crappy job pretending to listen to what Quinn wants to blabber about, and he's desperate and on edge and ready to run from the limo the moment the driver slams on the brakes. But the moment never comes. The car rolls to a stop, and Finn realises that they're at the school.

The accident didn't happen.

It was that simple. Why didn't he think of this earlier? Finn wants to pump his fist in the air and do a happy dance or something. No. He wants to see Rachel, that's what he wants.

As soon as he and Quinn step into the cafeteria, his looks for her. It's kinda hard, 'cause the lights are dim and there are people everywhere and there are weird, spastic lights going off like that's cool or something and will trick people into forgetting they're in the _cafeteria_. He nods at a couple people, and he lets Quinn drag him around as she makes the rounds, chatting with all the kids she deems worth her time.

She's on a mission to be prom queen, and he doesn't feel like trying to pull himself away from her and face a bitch out until he actually knows where Rachel is. He sees Artie at one point, and he waves. But he doesn't see Rachel.

He starts to freak again.

There _wasn't_ an accident, right?

He tells Quinn he wants to get something to eat, and she rolls her eyes but lets him go. He legit goes to the snack table at the back, even though, like, half the cookies are already gone and somebody spilled soda everywhere, and the parent behind the table trying to serve people looks like she wants to hit someone.

"I suppose you think you're rather clever, don't you?"

Finn spins around, and he can't help but grin at Rachel. She has her arms crossed over her chest once more, and she's tapping her foot as she waits for an answer. He shrugs. "I don't know what you're talking about, Rachel," he tells her calmly.

She narrows her eyes. "You realize this won't work, right?" she says. "I'm _supposed_ to die tonight, so no matter how many times you try to stop it —"

"I did stop it," he tells her.

She sighs, closing her eyes as if for patience. "Finn," she starts.

"Where's Sam?" he asks.

"In the bathroom. That's not important. Look, I don't understand why you _refuse_ to —"

"Dance with me?" he asks, holding out his hand.

"Finn!" She stomps her foot.

"_Please_, Rachel?" He looks at her as pleadingly and pathetically as he can, and he watches her deflate. She takes his hand, and his heart races a little at the contact, despite everything. He leads her out into the mass of students hopping around to some stupid pop song.

She sways her hips a little, but she still looks upset, and her hands are loose in his.

"Why don't you want me to save you?" he asks her quietly.

"Because you _can't_, Finn," she says, her eyes wide. "You yourself said there's real time and special time, and real time only moves forward because you let happened what's _supposed_ to happen. If I'm _supposed_ to die, and you try to stop that, you'll only become stuck in special time, unable to move forward."

Okay, that makes sense, but. . . .

"But I can't just _let_ you die," he tells her. "And how can you honestly want me to?"

She only gazes at him sadly. The music changes. She steps a little closer, wrapping her arms around his neck. He thinks maybe the last time they danced like this was at his mom's wedding. That seems like _ages_ ago. It kinda was. He rests his hands on her hips. "You dress is soft," he murmurs.

"Why can't you?" she finally asks.

"Because — because you're _Rachel_," he tells her. How else can he explain it all? "And I don't . . . I don't know how to be Finn without Rachel. It's, like, I mean, whenever I'm not with you, whenever you're not around, when we're not talking or not friends or . . . it's like I don't know who I am. Like I can't be myself."

"That's not very healthy," she says. But she won't look at him.

"Maybe," he replies, and he shrugs. "Or maybe it just means that you, like, make me better. I don't know. It doesn't matter. What matters is that I'm gonna save you. You're not gonna die." She looks up at him, then, and he can't help himself. "I don't give up that easy," he says.

She smiles the slightest bit, and then she steps a little closer to him, and she rests her head on his chest. "It'd be easier if we did," she whispers. Her eyes flicker closed, and he decides this is one of those moments when it's better not to say something.

He sees Artie nod subtly at him, as if in approval, and then he catches sight of Quinn, glaring daggers at him, but he knows she's not gonna make a scene right now. She'll wait for a better time to drag him away and yell. And, until then, he'll take all the time he can with Rachel.

* * *

><p>Quinn <em>does<em> yell at him.

And he blows her off. He finds Rachel, and he asks her if she wants to get out of there. The music is really bad, anyway, and really loud, and it's gotten really hot in there. All the food's gone, too, and he can't even get to the soda machines 'cause somebody covered them with construction paper, like that'd make the cafeteria prettier.

He's pretty sure Rachel won't leave with him.

"Let me talk to Sam," she murmurs.

She meets him out in the hallway.

They go to DQ, and they sit in the back of his truck with her dress bunched up around her knees as they share an Oreo blizzard, because that's her favourite even though she claims she can never eat one all by herself. She's pretty good about the vegan thing, but she treats herself every now and then, and he kinda likes that.

They talk about stupid stuff, like _Dancing with the Stars_ and Coach Sylvester and whether or not The Killers have actually made any significant contributions to the genre of alternative music. He wants to kiss her. He, like, _needs_ to. But he doesn't. He only drives her home, and she says goodbye quietly, sadly, and he wonders what piece of the puzzle he must _still_ be missing.

He saved her life today.

But he hasn't really saved her yet, has he?

* * *

><p>His alarm goes off at six.<p>

He lumbers out of bed and downstairs. "Hey, Mom," he says.

"Good morning, sweetheart," she replies, shooting him a smile.

"What's the date?"

"I'm not sure," she says.

He frowns. That can't be good. He goes over to the calendar. It's Monday. The 22nd. Of November. _Last year_. "It's November 22nd, 2010," he whispers.

"Sounds right," his mom says.

He has no idea what happened, but he knows this is around the time all that stuff with Santana came out and everything went wrong with he and Rachel. He tries to pretend this whole, like, month didn't even _happen_. And now he has to live through some random day of it?

But maybe this is before Santana let everything rip, when he and Rachel were at their best, right after the wedding when it seemed like it was only a matter of time before they had a wedding of their own. He could live through one of those days again.

"You okay, hon?" his mom asks. He glances over at him. He nods. He might be.

He gets to school a little early and tries to scope everything out. He can't tell. He nods at Puck, who looks away after shiftily and pretends not to see. That's weird. Finn frowns. That's _bad_. He goes to homeroom, and then English, and Santana winks at him in class. Finn ignores her. He falls asleep in history. And then it's lunch.

He goes to his locker, and _finally_ he sees Rachel. She sees him first, actually. "Finn!" She smiles nervously at him as she walks over. "Can we — can we maybe talk?"

"Yeah," he says. "Sure." He smiles, too, closing his locker and shoving his hands into his pockets. She starts to talk about Sectionals, and he realises that the guilty Puck and the flirting Santana and the nervous way Rachel looks at him — the Santana shit has already hit the fan.

He doesn't realise exactly what day it is, though, until they start to walk down the stairs. "When we first started Glee club," she says, "I told Mr. Schuester that being part of something special makes you special, and I don't know, but I think I _lost_ that somewhere along the way. . . ."

He swallows thickly. This has to be one of the worst days in the history of _ever_. This is the day they broke up. But then he thinks of Rachel lying dead on the side of the road, and he knows that he'd rather live this day again and again if he never had to see her covered in blood like that.

"Are we a part of something special?" he asks softly. "You and me?"

She looks down, and he can remember, he can remember so _well_, when this really happened, the way his heart suddenly pounded against his chest 'cause he was sure she was gonna say no and leave him and everything would suck so fucking much. But she looked up, like she looks up now. "Yes," she whispers.

There's so much in that one single word, and he kinda wants to cry. He knows he did then, too. "I love you," he tells her.

And she hugs him. He doesn't want to let go. He doesn't want to rest of the day to happen. If the rest of this day had never happened, then they never would have broken up, and she would be about to go to prom with him, and he would never have even imagined that she might die, let alone see it play out again and again.

She pulls back and looks up at him, and he can't say the words. He can't. He knows the script, but he doesn't care. He doesn't want to break up with her. He wants this day to play out differently. "You wanna get some lunch?" he asks.

She nods and smiles, but she hesitates when he grabs her hand. "Actually, before — there's, um, something that I need to tell you." She pulls him aside, and he can't believe this. He didn't set her up for the confession, but she wants to tell him anyway.

"Last week, when — when we were fighting," she starts, and he can see the way her hand trembles a little, and he can see the way there's all this regret and fear and pain and overwhelming insecurity rising up in her gaze, and he barely even listens to the story she tells. "I'm _so_ sorry," she finishes, "a-a-nd it will _never, ever_ happen again."

He stares at her. He can feel it all again, can feel the shock and the anger and the _hurt_, but he looks at her and he thinks about how desperately she tried to get him back and how messed up they both were for so long. He thinks about where they are now, in real time, and how somehow, someway, somewhere between this moment and the week of prom, he forgave her because — because he just _did_, because she was sorry and he was sorry. And he looks at her now and he knows that what she did was bad and awful, but they've both grown up since then and —

"Finn?" she whispers. "Aren't — aren't you going to say something?"

"I forgive you," he says.

"You — you do?" Her eyes are wide.

"That was really mean, Rachel, and you really hurt me —"

"If I could take it back, I would, but I can't change the past —" She sounds so desperate, and she reaches out and grasps his arms. "I was so stupid, Finn, but I _love_ you, and I let myself think that you couldn't possibly love me if you would sleep with someone so different from me, someone like Santana, so I wanted to prove that I didn't love you, either — but I _do_, Finn, I _do!"_

He reaches forward and hugs her. "We both messed up, Rachel," he tells her. "But we'll be okay."

She only clutches him tightly.

* * *

><p>The day passes quickly, and he runs around singing his heart out with all of the Glee club, and with Rachel, and he thinks about how much easier everything would have been if he really had forgiven her back then.<p>

But he couldn't have. They needed to be apart, because they needed — they needed to realize how much they really did love each other.

That's it, isn't it?

He needed to realize that she loved him, really loved him, and he could be honest with her and count on her and not hide from her or from their relationship. He needed to realize that she loved him, so that he didn't have to fear she would someday realize she could do better, and he could be with her _completely_.

And she needed to realize that he really loved her, so that she could finally accept herself the way she always pretends she does but never really has. She had to realise he really loved her so that she'd finally stop fearing she would never be enough for her, and she could be with him _completely_.

"Finn?" she says. He risks a quick glance from the road to look at her in the passenger's seat. "Are you really okay with everything I told you? I mean, I know you said you were never break up with me, and I'm so, _so_ glad that you meant what you said, but — but I don't want you to start to hate me and to resent me and —"

He pulls the car over to the side of the road.

"I was angry," he said. "I was so fucking pissed. But I was more hurt. It wasn't like when Quinn cheated on me, and I wanted to rip Puck to shreds, 'cause they had both treated me like shit. It was like _I'd_ been ripped to shreds, and all I could do was bleed to death —"

He stops, and he thinks of how she _will_ bleed to death if he doesn't save her. But he will.

"— but I managed to get past all the hurt. It took me a few months, but eventually I realized that you really did love me, and you just made a mistake, like I'd made lots of mistakes, 'cause we're both just stupid kids who are still learning how to this whole _love_ thing."

She has her head tilted slightly to the side, and she looks so fucking confused he thinks it might be kind of really, really hilarious if they weren't talking about serious stuff.

"A few months?" she whispers. "I don't. . . ."

He goes for broke. What's it gonna hurt? "I'm from the future, Rachel."

She stares at him. He waits. She stares some more. "I'm sorry?" she finally asks, her voice small.

He tells her the story. He tells her that last time, he broke up with her. He tells her what happened after that. He tells her about the Christmas tree parking lot, and the kissing booth, and when he thought maybe he should have stayed with Quinn, 'cause it was easier and it hadn't hurt as much when she'd cheated on him — maybe that meant she was better for him.

Rachel looks like she wants to cry as he talks about Quinn. He plows on, though.

He talks about how he started to realize, the more Quinn talked about prom, that prom was it for her, prom was what _mattered_ for her, and he was just what she needed to have the perfect prom. She didn't really love him at all. But he didn't do anything when he realized that, see, 'cause the truth is that he never really loved her, either, and _that_'s why it didn't hurt as much when she cheated on him.

"And then I was just kinda stuck, and I didn't know what to do," he says. "I cared about Quinn, though, and you and I weren't even really friends anymore, so I just kinda went along with life. But then I started to travel through time. . . ."

He tells her everything, and he tries to follow her facial expressions as she talks. She looks hurt and confused and uncertain and wary and surprised and a _lot_, okay? She feels a _lot_, which he totally gets. "So, I woke up this morning, and I was in the past. And that's it."

"Oh," she says. She turns to stare out the window. "That's some story."

"Do you believe me?"

She glances back at him. "I'm not sure I believe you, or _anyone_, could fabricate an elaborate story like that in so short a time. I mean, I don't believe you could come up with all that as some way to hurt me for what I did to you —"

"It's not," he says quickly.

She nods. "I know. So . . . none of today is real? Tomorrow, I'll wake up and relive this day with no memory of anything that happened today, and you won't forgive me and we'll be apart for months and months, and then I'll die on prom night?"

Wow, that sounds bad.

"You won't die," he says. "I'm gonna save you. I promise. I love you too much to let you die. And I know you won't remember this, and you're gonna have to suffer through months off us apart, but — but I'll save you, and we'll get our act together, and we'll be Finn and Rachel again. But better."

She leans forward and kisses him softly.

He gets back on the road and drives her home. He thinks it's kinda crazy that they really just had that whole conversation, and that she didn't think he was absolutely insane, but he guesses that's just _Rachel_. She kisses him again as she hops out of the truck.

"So you do know," she says, pausing before she shuts the car door, "or you will, or — I mean, in the future — you — you do know I love you? So much?"

He smiles. "Yeah. I know."

He watches her walk to her door, and he waves at her when she glances back one last time before she disappears into the house. He starts to put the truck into reverse, but he pauses. And he smiles to himself. He gets it. He gets how Thursday should play out.

He knows what he has to say.

* * *

><p>"Are you excited?" Kurt asks, bouncing on the bed.<p>

Finn considers socking him. Instead, he pulls the sheets up over his head and tells his step-brother to fuck off. Kurt makes a big fuss. Finn doesn't give a shit. He doesn't want to live this day over again. What good will it do? He has to relive Thursday again, and he has to make things right with Rachel, and then he can live through the real prom, and he can save her.

He eventually gets out of bed, and he puts on his tux, and he goes to Tina's house for pictures.

He sees Rachel. He smiles sadly at her, and she smiles sadly at him, and that's it. She goes off with Sam, and he slides into the limo with Quinn as she berates him for forgetting her corsage. Dinner starts the same as always. She pisses him off more than ever before, though, so he kinda says a few, you know, _things_ that might make upset her a little. "I think it's super awesome that we're having prom at the school," he tells her.

She almost turns purple in outrage, before she spends the next half hour giving him a detailed explanation of why the decision to host the prom at school is the _worst_ thing that could have possibly happened to any of them, _ever_. She has no idea. Hasn't she been through worse than this? Didn't she get pregnant at sixteen and have to give her child up for adoption?

Has she really forgotten that?

She hasn't. She simply tries to pretend she has, because that's easier. He feels bad for her suddenly. He knows something about denial as a way to cope with shit. He tries to be a little nicer to her for the rest of dinner. He starts to care less and less about Quinn, though, as they climb into the limo and start the drive to the school.

The limo screeches to a stop.

It happens like it always does. He thinks he'll stay in the car, because that's easier, but he can't simply sit there with Quinn, he can't, so he rushes out, and he rushes to her, and he falls on his knees and, God, she gazes up at him with blood and glass all around her and all over her and —

He punches the shit out of Sam.

And, a few hours later, he falls asleep at the hospital.

* * *

><p>His phone beeps loudly with a text.<p>

He grabs the stupid thing and flips it open. He frowns. It's from Rachel. _Good morning! :)_

Is he in the past again? She hasn't woken him up with a good morning text in ages, not since they were together. Wait. Hold on. Is he living in an alternate universe where he forgave Rachel the day before and now they're together again? But that's not really possible, right?

Then again, what the hell does he really know about _possible_, anymore?

He gets out of bed. His mom isn't in the kitchen, but he goes to the calendar. He can't believe it. It's October of last year. He's even _further_ in the last year, back when he and Rachel were together and _weeks_ before Santana would drop the bomb and everything would fall to pieces.

He thinks it over as he eats and decides he has to let this day play out however it's supposed to. He needs to get back to real time, so that he can save Rachel and work everything out between the two of them. He has to get back, but who knows how long that will take if he keeps changing the past? But what day is it — anything special? He can't remember anything specific about October 6th. He'll try to act cool, though, and let things go right.

He texts Rachel. _Am I picking you up?_

She texts back to say she has ballet, but she'll meet him at his locker. He smiles a little to himself. It'll be kind of fun, he thinks, to relive a good, easy day with her. He feels pretty good about it, actually, as he drives to school. He sees her almost right away, standing at her locker and unpacking her books.

He goes up and catches her by surprise. She squeals a little, and then turns around and tilts her face up for a kiss. He grins and gives her one, and he flicks Puck off when the other boy walks by and whistles. Rachel rolls her eyes, and Finn realizes she has his necklace on, the one with his name.

He wonders if she still even owns that necklace anymore. He'll think about that later.

"Come on," he tells her, taking her hand. "I'll walk you to class."

The day passes easily. He realises they're working on duets right now, and Rachel wants to have a strategy meeting for how to lose, and he grins when he realizes what day this is. He goes over to her house after school, and he hides his grin as he watches her pace around the room.

"You remember we saw _Grease_ and it was good and we saw _Grease 2 _and I fell asleep," he starts. He lays out his idea, and he watches her face light up, and then she pounces and peppers little kisses all over his face, and he thinks he could do this day again and again and _again._

They make out, and she lets his hands wander, 'cause she's completely _awesome_, and then he has dinner with her dads, who are nice and dorky and so enamoured with her that it's kind of hilarious. It's a fun dinner. They plan out their crazy Catholic duet for the rest of the night before she kisses him goodbye.

And it's all so perfect, because they're _them_ again.

He misses _them_.

He wants _them_ back.

* * *

><p>"It's Thursday, sweetie," his mom says, "Thursday, May 26th." She shoots him a small smile. "You've asked every day this week," she goes on. "You really need to get some more sleep."<p>

He only nods. Okay. He'll do this day right, and he'll finally understand why Rachel wants him to let her die, and he'll be able to find a way to save her. Like always, Rachel comes over to him by his locker before homeroom. "Hey, so I've done some more research," she says, smiling shyly.

"Research?" he repeats, and he feels the way he does before a big performance or a big game. His heart pounds a little and he kind of wants to barf, but he he feels good, too, like _alive_ and stuff.

"Mmm-hmm. Well, I watched _Back to the Future, _as you asked. I actually thought it was rather amusing, I'll admit. But I found the doc's explanation for time travel to be _vastly_ incorrect. I can understand why he sold you on his theory, though, because it's so simple, and we always want a simple explanation — it's a natural human inclination. I mean, isn't that what's behind Occam's Razor?"

"Yeah, that's Occam's Razor," he says. That's right — he looked it up.

"So, as I said before, time really isn't _linear_. It's circular. And you can travel around that circle, but you can't change any part of it, as what's going to happened has already happened. I've drawn up a picture for you — I think I can explain it to you in the same sort of terms the doc uses." She starts to rustle through her backpack.

"You wanna ditch homeroom?" he asks. "I mean, like, we gotta talk about this and stuff. So let's go out to the bleachers. Nobody'll be out there right now." He shrugs a little.

She agrees and they head out. "I feel like such a _rebel_," she declares.

"Yeah, Puck's got nothing on you," he teases, and she shoves him playfully.

He really wants to grab her hand and swing her around and kiss her. He doesn't.

The sit on the bleachers. "Okay," she says. "Now, this circle here is time. This random point is today. This random point is Saturday, is prom night. See, there's no start and finish, and no way to deviate off into another random circle."

"And we can't just create a new circle because that would create a whole new future and a whole new past, which be like a whole new world, and that could mess up the universe and stuff," he says like a boss, his face totally serious.

"Exactly!" she exclaims. But she pauses.

He nods. "Yeah, I've lived this day before," he tells her. "So how was the Sci Fi channel?" He grins widely.

"It was _necessary_!" she exclaims indignantly, and he only laughs. "Can we move on?" she asks, arms crossed. "I've looked over the timeline, and I think I understand how it works. I re-did it last night," she adds, "as I think a circle would really make more sense."

"Sure."

They go over her theory. "Of course, now the question is if you're in real time today," she says. "Have you successfully lived through Wednesday?"

"Yeah," he says, nodding.

"Good! Now, let's see. . . ." She looks over the timecircle. "Well, I think until we have any concrete ideas, here's the plan: try to let things play out the way you think they ought to. For now, don't mess with any prom related events."

"I don't think that's the best plan," he replies. "It makes sense, and I did that yesterday, and I guess it was right, then, but if the week's really progressing, then we're getting closer to Saturday, and we can't waste anytime simply waiting for a concrete idea. We should put a _real_ plan together now so that we can save you."

"What do you suggest?" she asks quietly.

"I don't know," he says, shrugging a little. He kinda wants to get right to the point, but he has to play this out right. "I mean, I was kinda hoping you'd have something." He smiles a little at her. "You always know what to do."

"Oh, Finn," she says, shaking her head a little. She looks away from him and gazes out at the empty football field. "I really don't always know."

"Hey," he says gently, taking her hand. "We're gonna figure this out. You're not gonna die."

She glances back at him, smiling gently. "I know." She squeezes his hand.

"Okay," he says, "I've got an idea. What if we go to prom together? I told Quinn I'd go with her, but I really don't want to. And if you go with me, then we can just take a different road to the school, or something, and make sure you're not in the accident."

"I, um —"

He waits for a second. "Or we could just not go at all," he goes on. "We could just hang out and watch movies in my basement or something. In fact, that'd probably be a better guarantee that nothing'd happen. Right?"

"Finn," she says, "I've already accepted an offer to attend prom with someone else."

"Sam?" he says.

Slowly, she nods. "He asked me this morning when he gave me a ride to school. He was really sweet about it, actually. There was this Katy Perry song on the radio, and he —"

"You can't go with him," Finn says. "Why do you even _want_ to?"

"Finn," she says.

"It happens in his car, Rachel! You fly through the windshield of _his_ car! He's the fucking moron who gets you killed, and — and I don't care if you don't think it's his fault, you're still in _his_ car, and, besides, why do you even _want_ to go with him? He's a fucking douche! I've been an ass, too, but why _him_, Rachel?

"Because I _like_ him, Finn!" she exclaims.

He still hates the sound of that, even the second time around, even though he purposely goaded her to say those words. "What, as a friend?" he asks, and he doesn't have to put the desperation into his voice.

"No, Finn, I —" She falters. "I — I have feelings for him." Her expression grows apologetic.

"You can't," he says.

"And why not?" she demands.

"Because he's gonna get you killed!"

"It's not his fault!" she shouts, stomping her foot.

"You don't know that," he says, "you haven't seen it. _I_ have. And I don't want to see it again. So _listen_ to me! I'm doing this to save your life!"

She glares up at him, taking slow, heavy breaths, her chest heaving. "Why is it," she hisses, "that _you_'re the one who's meant to save me, exactly? We haven't even been friends, been _anything_, for months! All you've done these last few months is _hurt_ me! You ignored me and abandoned me in a tree lot, and you patted my head and told me you _believed_ in me, even though you didn't want to spend any actual time with me. You wouldn't forgive me for kissing Puck out of jealousy and anger — you were too busy swapping _spit_ with the girl who _slept_ with Puck and then _lied _to you for months.

"You abandoned me, Finn, and you ignored me, and you _broke my heart_!" Her breath comes out unsteadily, and she's near tears. "But, what, now the universe wants _you_ to save my life, is that it? Why, Finn? Why _you_? Before this week, I meant _nothing_ to you. We weren't even friends. So why you?"

"Because I love you!"

She stares at him.

"Don't you know that?" he asks. "I love you, Rachel. I never stopped. And I know I acted like I did, and it's because I tried to stop. I tried _so_ hard not to love you, because I was convinced you didn't love me, that you wouldn't have cheated on my if you did. And I told myself that you had to move on from whatever you thought you felt for me, 'cause you could do better, and I could only manage to survive everything if I didn't have to be faced everyday by you and how much I _still_ loved you, despite everything, despite the fact that you didn't love me."

"I . . . I didn't cheat on you because I didn't love you," she whispers.

"I know that now," he says. He steps closer to her. "I know that _now_, I do. And I wish it hadn't taken all this for me to figure that out, but I finally get it. You always loved me, and I always loved you, and we were both so fucking _terrified_ that the other person didn't love us the same way, so we fucked ourselves over.

"But we can still make it right, Rach. Let _me_ make it right. Let me save you, because I _love_ you."

She starts to cry.

"Do — do you love me, too?" he asks.

She nods, clutching a hand to her mouth.

"Still?" he presses.

"Still," she murmurs. "I love you. _Still_."

He reaches for her, but she stumbles back a few feet, and she shakes his head. "I'm sorry," she says, "but I can't . . . I can't, I just — I can't." She bolts down the bleachers. She doesn't even grab her backpack before she goes. He starts to call her name, but the word catches in his throat, and he simply watches her leave.


	4. Chapter 4

He doesn't understand.

He finally said what he needed to say. He finally said what he was thinking and what he was feeling. He was finally just honest, with her and with himself. He _does_ love her, and she admitted that she loves him, too. And he understands where they went wrong, and he knows that they could really be together, and be better, a second time around. If she still loves him, why would she _still_ walk away?

And he still has to save her. How can she not want that? He tries to talk to her again at school, but he can't find her anywhere. He has her backpack and he decides after fifth period that she must have simply left school. That's really not like her, but maybe she's just overwhelmed, or something, and she had to get _out_. He knows that feeling.

But he wants to get out _with_ her, away from school and stupid stuff that doesn't matter. Out, where they can focus on him and her and how to save her so that they can be him and her again. He has to talk to her again. As soon as the final bell rings, he speeds out of class and out to the parking lot, and he pretends not to hear Quinn shout his name.

He drives to Rachel's, and he sees her car in the driveway. There aren't any other cars. Her dads aren't home. He half expects her not to answer the door when he rings the doorbell, but she does, and she even offers him a tentative smile when she steps back to let him in. "I'm glad you came over," she says. "I skipped all my classes to come home and think, and we need to talk."

"Yeah," he says. "We do." She leads him upstairs, and has him sit on her bed. "I meant what I said earlier," he tells her, because he has to get this out before anything else happens. "I do love you. And I want to be with you again. But even if you don't want to be with me again, you still have to let me save you. You have to."

"I love you, too," she says. She smiles. "I love you so much. I never stopped. I tried to move on, and I think I grew up a little, and I realized that I can't control everything, and that I need to put myself out there more, I mean really put myself out there and open myself up to people so that I can have real friends. I think that's why I got to know Kurt, and because friends with him and with Mercedes and with Sam — because I finally let them know the real _me_.

"The only other person I've ever really let in is you. And I'm glad for that. Despite everything that went wrong between us, I don't regret us, and I still love you so much." Tears gather in her eyes, and he realizes that his own eyes burn a little, too.

"But, Finn, I love you so much that . . . that I don't want this to be your life."

He frowns. "What — what do you mean?"

Wringing her hands slightly, she sits down beside him. "You have to let me die, Finn, because it's the only way you can really live."

He shakes his head. How can she say that? "No," he murmurs. "No, that doesn't even —"

"Yes," she insists. "Yes, Finn. I don't know why we have to go through this. I don't know why you have the power to jump through time. I don't. But I know it's not some cosmic helping hand to give you the chance to save me, because you _can't_ save me, Finn. You _can't._"

"I can!" he says, trying not to shout. "You just have to _let_ me!"

"It doesn't work that way!" she says, standing.

"It _does_ —"

"No, believe me," she cries, clutching her head, "it doesn't!" She takes a few gasping breaths. "Finn, you said that real time only moves forward when you let the days play out the way they're supposed to. You finally had Monday play out right, and eventually Tuesday, and then Wednesday, and you're trying to make Thursday go right.

"And, eventually, Thursday will play out correctly. And then Friday will, and then it will be the real prom day, and what will happen? You'll try to save me, and then what? You'll jump to some random day because that isn't what's supposed to happen. I'm _supposed_ to die. That's how they day's supposed to play out."

"No," he says, "you're _supposed_ to live."

"Look at the timecircle," she says, grabbing the paper from her desk. "You only moved from prom day to the next real day when you let me die without sabotaging anything. And when you did change something so that I could survive, you had to go to another random day in time before you returned to real time. You _only_ went to real time when you let me die."

"I . . . no, I mean — no, that doesn't —" He shakes his head, because she's wrong.

"Finn, if we come to the real prom day, and you save my life, then it'll all just start over again. You'll jump through time, unable to live your _real_ life, because you won't let me die. You have to let me die. It's the only way."

"No!" he shouts, and he stands. "I'm not gonna let you die. This is completely _insane_, Rachel, and I can't believe you would say this. Why? Why would you —?"

"Because I love you!" she exclaims. She grabs his hands. "I love you, and I don't want this to be your life, because it _isn't_ a life! If I don't die on prom night, then you'll stay trapped in time, reliving the same days over and over again. Is that what _you_ want?"

"It's better than letting you die!" he says. "I'd rather live stuck in time than just let you die and live out my real life without you!"

"But living in trapped time isn't really _living_!"

He surges forward, clasping her hands tightly, and he kisses her. She gasps in surprise, opening her mouth to his, and her pours every pent up feeling into that kiss, into his lips against hers, into his tongue sliding against hers, into the kiss, into _them_. Her shaking hands come up to grasp his shoulders, as if to steady herself, and he tugs her closer to him, clutching her, even as he finally breaks the kiss.

His chest rises and falls unsteadily in time with hers. "This," he breathes. "_This_ is living, Rachel. This is real. And I'll take this over anything else, even if I have to explain that to you again and again because we're stuck in some fucked up world where you're supposed to die."

She shakes her head, even as she leans into him. "Finn, don't you want to get married? Don't you want have children? Don't you want to travel to all sorts of exotic places and grow old?"

"Yeah," he whispers. "I want that. I want all that — but I want it with _you_."

"You can't have it with me," she says.

"Then I'll take what I can have," he tells her. He kisses her cheek. He kisses her forehead, and her temple, and the corner of her lip, and the bridge of her nose, and her cheek again, and —

"I won't let you do that," she whispers. "I love you too much for that. And if you love me, then you'll do this for me. You'll let me love you enough to save you. You'll let _me_ save _you_." She pulls away from him, wiping at her tears.

He shakes his head.

"Think about it," she says. "For a while, it'll be okay. But think about it, Finn. _Really_ think about it. Think about constantly trying to have to figure out what day it is. Think about living on a script. Think about the random days when you'll be forced to relive my funeral or visit my grave. Think about having to prove to me again and again and _again_ that you really love me, and that you want to fix what went wrong with us. Think about having to see me with Sam every Monday. Think about having to watch me slushied every Wednesday. Think about how every time we have a good day, I won't even remember it."

_No._

But she only goes on. "Think about if we were to run away one day, to skip school and escape everything. You'd wake up the next day, and it wouldn't even be the next day. It would be some random day, maybe the day Sam asks me to prom and I say yes, because that's how the story's supposed to go. Think about that, Finn. Think about what your life would become. It'd be like a sad movie that never ends. And maybe it has it's happy moments, but after a while those aren't enough, because they're not real, because no one else even remembers them. Not even me."

He sinks down on her bed.

"I don't want that to be your life," she tells him. "That _isn't_ a life."

"So I just let you die?" he whispers.

"No," she says, and she comes to stand in front of him, so close that her legs are tucked between his. "No, you don't let me die. You realize that it was never really up to you. That you don't let me die, because it's not your decision. It's God's or fate's or a really, really bad nightmare's decision. It's not yours. And you have to love me enough to let me go, so that you can live a real life." She cups his cheek and runs her thumb gently across his face.

"What was all this about, then?" he asks. "If I'm not supposed to save you, if it's not even in my hands at all, then why let me see what would happen?"

"So that we can have a chance to find each other again," she whispers. She kisses him sweetly, and he pulls her even closer, gripping her waist tightly. She rests her forehead against his, and her breath washes warmly over his lips. "So that I can have you as mine again for _real,_" she says,_ "_even if for only a day."

He can't hear any of this. It makes too much sense, and he can't. . . .

He kisses her, and he can taste peanut butter and bananas, and he can smell her peppermint lotion, the kind her dad buys special for her, and it's all just so familiar, _she's_ so familiar, and her small, soft form feels so _perfect _pressed up against him. "You do love me, don't you?" she whispers into his lips.

"So much," he breathes, and he turns slightly, laying her back on the bed and beneath him, and her arms come around him, her hands running through his hair and then running along his back as he trails kisses along her jaw and down her neck, feeling her throat move under his lips. "I can't lose you again," he says, pressing his face into the soft, sweet skin of her shoulder. "I can't."

"You won't lose me," she tells him. He looked at her, and her hands come up to stroke his face. "You'll always have me to remember and to love and to think of and feel everything love is supposed to make you feel." She kisses him.

And he feels her hands slip down his back and then grip the hem of his shirt and start to tug the polo off. He pulls back enough to let her pull the shirt over his head, and she leans up slightly and presses a kiss to his chest. "Rachel," he whispers.

"This is _real_, Finn. This is living. This is real, living _love_." She takes his hand and rests it over her racing heart. "I can feel it," she whispers. "Here."

He nods, not taking his eyes off hers, and she lifts her arms up. He tugs off her cardigan and her shirt off at once, and he kisses her again, soft and slowly, until the world starts to drop off around them, because he can't think about anything but _her_, but her nose brushing against his, but her hand skating along his back, but her toes curling against his calves, but her soft, warm skin, trembling slightly under his touch, but _Rachel_, and her kisses and her warm breath and _her_.

Somehow, she undoes the button of his jeans, and his hands find the zipper of her skirt, and they slowly undress one another. He doesn't really know what he's doing, but she doesn't either, and they're in this together. She kisses him, and he doesn't feel afraid.

He pushes into her, and she stares up at him, her breath slow and stuttering.

"This is real," he whispers.

She nods, and he squeezes her hands, intertwined with his, as he starts to move, and they're _them_ again.

* * *

><p>"Am I really supposed to watch you die and not to do anything?"<p>

She lies pressed against him, her head on his chest, her fingers tracing random patterns across his stomach. "You're supposed to love me," she says. He toys with her hair, because he does, and that's it, isn't it? He loves her, and he doesn't want her to _die_.

"I don't know if I can do it," he says. "I do love you, and I — I don't want to bury you and live year after year without you, because you died and I didn't stop it, and. . . ."

She leaned up and kisses him, taking away his words. "If you love me, Finn, then let me love you, and let me give you the rest of your life, okay? Please." He looks at her, with her hair a tangle around her head, and her lips swollen from his kisses, and her eyes so large and earnest and _fearless_. Isn't she scared, like him?

"You want me to prove how much I love you by watching you die?"

"I want you to love me enough to trust me that it has to go like this." She takes his hand and kisses his knuckles. "Please, Finn? _Please_. You can go on for a while, but I want this day to be right. I want to remember this. And I don't want you to live through weeks or months before you give up, with this moment here only a distant, distant memory, lost in it all, a real moment lost in a life that isn't real. I want you to remember me like this, and no other way. If you really love me, you'll do this for me. Please?"

And he knows he really can't deny her anything. He never has been able to. He nods.

"Promise me not to try to change what will happen? Promise me you'll love me and trust me and do this for me? Promise me, Finn?"

He curls his fingers around hers. "I promise."

* * *

><p>He doesn't know how many hours he actually sleeps.<p>

He wakes up when his radio turns on at six. He slams his hand down to silence the sports commentator, and then he stares up at the ceiling. He needs to get out of bed. He has to find out what day it is. Did yesterday play out right or not? He can't seem to force himself out of bed.

He wants the day to have been right, because, somehow, despite everything, he can't really think of a better day he's ever had, and he wants it to have been real, like they told each other it was. He wants it to have been _right_, like he knows it was. But if that's how it was supposed to go, then today's Friday, and tomorrow will be Saturday, will be the _real_ Saturday.

He doesn't think he can handle that.

Slowly, he kicks off his sheets. He goes to the bathroom, mechanically brushes his teeth, mechanically dresses, and mechanically walks downstairs. "Good morning, Finn," his mother greets pleasantly.

"Morning," he says. "What's the date?"

"Mmm, the 27th, I believe."

His breath catches a little. "Friday, May 27th?" he says.

She nods. "That's right."

* * *

><p>He's never actually lived this day before. Really, that means it might be three or four days, if not more, before the real Saturday comes. He doesn't have any idea how he's supposed to act. Is he allowed to talk to Rachel? But he has to be, because what happened between them yesterday was supposed to happen, so surely he's not suddenly supposed to ignore her today. Right?<p>

He texts her.

He might as well find out.

_Hey_.

She texts back moments later. _Good morning_ _:)_

He stares at the text. He doesn't want to go to school. He knows he should, that he's _got_ to if he's gonna do the day right. But, honestly, there's no way he's gonna do this day right on the first try anyway, and he's not sure he wants to. He just wants to spend a little more time with Rachel.

_You wanna ditch school today? I don't think I can handle it._

He sits at the kitchen table and stares at his phone, willing her to reply.

_Is that what we're suppose to do?_ she replies.

He sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. His mom asks if he's okay. He just nods.

_I don't know what we're supposed to do. I've never lived this day before. But it's what I wanna do. I just wanna hang out with you. Just you and me, you know?_

She doesn't text back for nearly five minutes. He grips his phone tightly when she does.

_Okay._

They make plans to meet at the lake that's on the outskirts of town. He eats breakfast and talks a little with Burt, and he gives Kurt a ride to school. He even gets out of the car and stuff, and then pretends he forgot something, and he sends Kurt on ahead of him.

He speeds out of the parking lot.

Rachel's already there when he arrives, and she has on shorts and a tank top, her bathing suit just barely visible underneath. Her hair's in a pony tail, she's wearing flip flops, and she looks so amazing that he kisses her even as she starts to say hello.

She smiles a little into his lips. "I love you," she says.

He leans his forehead against hers. "You have no idea."

* * *

><p>She insists they put on suntan lotion.<p>

They talk for a little while, then, about nothing, really. She tells him about this book she's reading, and she says she brought some snacks and some bored games and even her computer and some DVDs. He grins. She's always so prepared.

"You would have made a really good boy scout," he tells her.

"I _did_ make a very good girl scout," she replies.

They go swimming for a little while, splashing around and then just floating. The water's cold, but they grow used to it, and Finn thinks maybe it warms up after a little while. They eat these little sandwiches she packed for lunch, and she puts on big, pink sunglasses.

She looks so adorable — he _has_ to kiss her again.

They play a little _Battleship_. She wins. They swim some more. They kiss some more. They eat the raisins and crackers she packed. And, by three in the afternoon, as he lies sprawled across his back and she rests on top of him, her head on his chest, they've still managed to avoid any talk of prom night and what they know has to happen.

(But does it really?)

Even as he starts to nod off, though, she finally says something, her voice soft and wistful. "I wish I could go to prom with you." She traces a random design on his stomach, and her fingers are cool against his sun-baked skin.

"Me, too," he murmurs. And then he can't help himself. "We can, if you want." He curls her hair around his finger. How can her hair honestly be so soft _all_ the time?

"But that's not what's supposed to happen. I wouldn't even remember it, would I?" she asks. He doesn't want to say no, so he says nothing. "It wouldn't be real." It's quiet for a long time.

"You're gonna go with Sam, right?" he says. Sam isn't a bad guy, he really isn't, but Rachel shouldn't go with him. She should go with Finn. She's _supposed_ to go with Finn — except she's not. She's not supposed to go with him, and that's the point, isn't it?

He wraps an arm around her back, as if she might suddenly pull away.

"I have to, don't I?" she says.

"No," he whispers. "No, you don't."

"I do," she replies, her voice a whisper, too. "We both know that. This is how . . . for the first time, this — this is how it's really supposed to go."

He can't think of the right words. He settles for the best he knows. "I love you."

She presses a soft butterfly kiss to his chest. "You have no idea."

* * *

><p>He makes a bed out of his jacket and their clothing.<p>

Her skin is as warm and damp as his, and her hair is a messy tangle that forms a curtain around their faces as she kisses him, licking her way into his mouth and nipping on his lips. She tastes like Gatorade, and she smells like suntan lotion and sweat, and she feels like _Rachel. _He keeps his hands on her hips, and he won't break her gaze as she moves slowly over top him, his name on her lips.

She doesn't move off of him, away from him, for a while. They simply lie there, breathing together, her sweaty face pressed against his neck, her breath hot against his skin. He can feel her tears, too. "Are you scared?" he asks. He is.

"I'm terrified," she admits softly.

He clutches her. He wishes he didn't have the power to travel through time, but the power to make time stand still. He wishes they could stay like this forever.

(He could. But she couldn't. And he doesn't want to stay here without her.)

* * *

><p>That night, they go bowling.<p>

She laughs and lets him try to teach her how to bowl again, but she still manages to fail spectacularly. He wants her to get a strike, though, just so they can fix _another_ past mistake. She never does get one, but she gets a spare, and she claps and squeals and he kisses her firmly on the lips.

They eat pizza for dinner, and he teases her when she eats the pepperoni. "Some vegan you are."

"It's tradition," she protests, pinking slightly.

He doesn't want to say goodbye to her. He doesn't know how. He's pretty sure it's not really goodbye; he'll see her tomorrow, but it won't be tomorrow — it'll be a year ago, or two days ago, or three months from now. But she won't see him tomorrow. Still, he walks her to her car, and he presses her up against the side and kisses her, tracing her lips with his tongue, running his hands up and down her sides, sucking her tongue into his mouth.

He feels intoxicated when they finally break apart. He keeps his arms around her, and she presses her face to his chest. "I want you to know," she finally says. "I want you to know —" She gazes up at him. "That you're the most amazing person I've ever known, and I know, I _know_, you'll do great things someday."

"Don't," he says, choking a little, his eyes burning with tears he doesn't want to cry.

(Can he really do this, just because she says he has to, just because she asks him to?)

"I have to say this," she tells him, tears beading in her own eyes. "Because maybe it'll be another week or two before Saturday comes for you, but it's my tomorrow, and I won't be able to see you, not really."

"Rach," he says.

"Thank you," she tells him. "Thank you for the last two years. You changed my life. And thank you for the last week." She smiles tearfully at him. "For everything. Thank you. I really do love you."

"I know," he says. "I love you, too."

Her hands curl into the material of his shirt. "Promise me something?" she asks.

"Anything," he breathes.

"Promise me that you'll go off to some amazing college, and you'll do really well. Promise me you'll major in something you love, and you'll get a job you love, and you won't settle for anything. Promise me you'll marry and have lots of kids — "

"Rachel —" He can't hear this.

But she only goes on, ignoring his protests. "And if you have a girl, you have to make her watch all the classics, and take her to dance lessons and singing lessons — for me. And — and take her to Broadway shows, too, at least one every year." She laughs a little, but her tears finally spill free, too. "Promise me that you'll take the world by storm," she whispers, "like you have this last week, okay? _Promise me_."

"Rachel," he repeats.

"Promise me."

"I — I promise."

He kisses her, he hugs her, he tells her loves her, and he watches her climb into her car.

He watches her drive away.

His mom looks pissed when he arrives home a little past ten at night, but she pauses when she sees his expression. "Later," he tells her. "Please just give me a night?" Uncertainly, she nods, and he reminds himself that she really is the most awesome mom ever. But Rachel would probably be a totally incredible mom, too.

He cries that night, in his bed, in the dark, and he doesn't remember when he falls asleep.

* * *

><p>Kurt wakes him up. "Are you excited?" Kurt says, sitting on the edge of Finn's bed.<p>

Finn's heart stops. "Is it Saturday?" he whispers. But he already knows how this day starts.

"That's right!" Kurt trills. "It's Saturday, May 28th! The big day! Our Junior Prom!"

Finn can't believe it. How can yesterday have possibly been right?

(How can it possibly have been wrong? He should have known.)

* * *

><p>He wants to call her all day.<p>

But he thinks of her pleas that he'll let this day go the way it should, and he resists. And she's right. There isn't a way to change what happens. If he does, he'll only live these same days ago. And that isn't living. He takes a two hour shower, and he lets Kurt help him with his tuxedo, and he apologizes when he snaps at Kurt for being so fucking_ happy_.

He doesn't really know what happens to the whole day, but somehow it passes.

They take pictures at Tina's house, all the Glee kids there, and all their parents, too, and Finn tries not to watch Rachel in her bright pink dress, with her hair curly and her eyes all smoky and pretty, as she giggles and poses with Sam and with Kurt and with everyone _but_ Finn.

He grows sick to his stomach with each passing minute.

And how can she even be happy right now? She _knows_ what's supposed to happen tonight.

Eventually, they all start to group off into cars. And finally, _finally_, Rachel glances over at Finn. Her expression in that instant breaks his heart a little, because he knows with absolute certainty for the first time that Rachel really _is_ an amazing actress.

After a moment, she smiles a little at him, her eyes soft, and he almost can't stop himself — he wants to go over and grab her around the waist and kiss her, long and hard, and then he'll take her to prom, and she'll survive, and it'll be _perfect._

And if he has to live in random moments forever, at least she'll be alive, too.

_It wouldn't be real,_ her voice whispers.

She breaks his gaze and climbs into the car, Sam shuts the door behind her, and that's that.

"Finn," Quinn says sharply, and he knows she's probably pissed, 'cause he's been watching Rachel all night, and, yeah, he forgot the corsage again. He offers her a weak smile, and they both climb into the limo that's just arrived. The drive is slow, and Quinn complains about how pictures took _forever_ and did they really need to invite the _whole_ Glee club? He just kinda nods and doesn't really listen.

Dinner passes slowly, painfully, and he glances at his watch continually.

By eight, he finally can't take any more of Quinn's chatter about prom, and he manages to escape to the bathroom. He locks the door and then splashes water on his face. He grips the sides of the sink and stares at himself in the mirror. An hour from now, Rachel will be dead.

How is he simply supposed to let that happen?

_If you really love me, you'll do this for me_.

He focuses on that last smile Rachel gave him, and he returns to Quinn. They leave a few minutes later. He can barely breathe properly as the limo starts to drive to the school. Quinn grips his arm and leans into him, and he closes his eyes and sees Rachel's smile.

He tries not to be sick.

The limo pulls over to the side of the road. He forces the words out. "We're not there already, are we?" he asks, gripping the seat with white knuckles.

"We can't possibly be," Quinn says. "It's at least half an hour to school." She pauses. "Honestly," she mutters, and she flicks down the partition. "What's the matter? Why have we stopped?" she demands.

The sudden impulse overwhelms him.

He has to see her one more time.

He knows he should wait a few more minutes, wait until he hears Kurt scream, but he can't. He just can't. He needs _one_ last moment, _one_ last glimpse. He shoots out of his seat, shoving open the door and stumbling out. He ignores Quinn's indignant shout. Other cars have pulled over to the side of the road, and Finn sees Kurt nearly fall out of Blaine's car, even as Blaine rolls the car to a stop — just like the times before.

Finn ignores them. He knows right where to go, and his walk breaks into a run, right to the overturned car, and then past the car, past where Kurt leans down to help Sam, and ten feet forward to Rachel, lying on the ground, _dying._

Finn drops to his knees, and Rachel looks up at him.

Blood plasters her hair to her head, and blood stains her face and her neck and the top of her dress, _so much blood_, but her eyes focus on him and hold his gaze. There's glass in her stomach, a sharp jagged piece that thrusts out from the bloodied, torn material of her dress, just like the last time, just like _all_ the last times.

"Rachel," he whispers, because this can't really be real, can't really be _it._

People shout, sirens sound in the distance, cars squeal to sudden stops, but Finn doesn't pay attention. He slips his hands under her and pull her closer to him, pull her into his lap. She gazes at him, her chest rising and falling slowly, blood trickling from her nose. "I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm so sorry."

She doesn't stay anything. She just breathes slowly, harshly, her eyes steady on his face.

"I love you," he says. "You know that, right? I love you so much. I've never loved anybody like I love you." The words tumble out of him. "And I never will. I love you. _I love you_." He's crying, but he doesn't realize until his own tears splatter onto her face.

He hears somebody gasp, shout her name, and then somebody screams something about 911, but Finn doesn't _truly_ hear any of it, not really. He clutches Rachel a little closer, her mouth opens, closes, and then opens again, and he pulls her even closer still.

"You —" She tries to say something, her words muffled. "— you —" She swallows, and blood gathers in the corner of her lips. "Good," she whispers. "Did good."

"No," he says, shaking his head and choking a little on his own breath. "No, I shouldn't have let this happen, I shouldn't have —

She tries to say something, her eyes glassy. It's happening. It's _happening_. She's dying. He knows. He's seen it all before. But this time it's for real. And suddenly the desperation starts to claw up in him, because he's not really gonna let this happen, is he?

_No._

He can't.

"Stay with me," he cries, "for just a little longer, _please_!" Her chest doesn't rise up as much anymore, and she can't seem to say the words aloud, even as her lips move. _No._ No. He was supposed to stop this, wasn't he? He spent the last few weeks trying to stop this.

"Just stay with me, baby," he says. "We were wrong. I never should have, oh, God, _Rach, _you can't leave me, okay? Stay with me." It's too late. He should have realized sooner. It's too fucking late. _Oh, God._

What has he done?

Her chest rises, falls, and doesn't rise again. Her eyes glaze and then flicker shut and — and —

"No," he says, desperate, his heart thumping, his mind reeling, his eyes blurring with tears. "Open your eyes, Rachel. Open your eyes. _Open your eyes_!"

But she doesn't. She only lies motionless. He starts to sob then, barely able even to breathe. The rest of the world falls away. He crumples forward, his face pressing to hers, still so warm, still so soft. Somebody screams his name, and light blinds him. He clutches her, and he shakes and sobs and begs her to open her eyes, but she doesn't move.

Rachel dies on prom night.

* * *

><p>The barrage of sounds hits him first.<p>

"Pulse is back," someone says. "And looks like he's conscious."

He groans, trying to open his eyes, but everything hurts, and his lungs burns, and he can't think —

He tries to make sense of the voices, but he can't, and there's beeping, and where is he? Light shines in his eyes, and he cringes, and his side throbs. "Right pupil's blown," someone calls. He blinks, his vision clears, and his eyes catch on her. "Hey there, buddy, can you look at me?" She smiles at him, and she has blonde hair. "Do you know where you are? Can you tell me your name?"

He tries to say something. He tries to say his name. He wants to ask her where he is, and what's happening, but nothing comes out, and he can't talk, and his head pounds, and he can't breathe, he just can't —

"You're okay," she says. "You're okay. We're on the way to the hospital right now, and you're gonna be just fine. Okay. I've got your hand. Can you feel my hand? Can you give it a squeeze?" He stares at her, trying to focus, but he can't, and — and where's Rachel? What happened? She died. _God, no._ She died, for real. And what happened to him? What —?

He can't breathe, he can't — he can't — he has to — he — Rachel —

"BP's dropping!"

"Stay with me, kid —"

And the world turns black.

* * *

><p>His head feels like cotton.<p>

He doesn't want to wake up, but he knows his alarm will probably go off soon. His eyes flutter groggily, and he tries to turn to the side, but he can't, and he tries to fall back asleep, but he can't, and then suddenly he sees it all, sees Rachel die, and his eyes fly open.

Everything's white and bright and he blinks furiously. His head throbs, and he aches, every part of him, every bone, just _aches_, and the feeling sweeps over him in a wave. He tries to look around, but his vision swims with the effort. Where is he? He can remember this blonde woman asking his name and telling him he'll be okay, and he can remember Rachel dying, but —

Fingers stroke his hand, and Finn blinks again, desperately trying to understand where he is. And then he sees her. He's lying somewhere strange, but she's there with him. _Rachel_. She sits in a chair, and she holds his hand in hers, gently running her thumb over his knuckles, her eyes closed tightly, her hair in a messy bun. Her face looks sallow, and bandages stretch across her collar bone and disappear beneath a ratty sweatshirt that Burt wears around the house, but she's _alive._

He doesn't know what's happened, or where he is, or _anything_, but he knows that Rachel's alive, perfectly alive, and she's sitting right there, right beside him, and that can't be bad. Has a new day started? But he let prom night play out the way it was supposed to, didn't he?

He tries to say her name. "Ra — " The sound scrape against his throat. "Ra — _ch_ —"

She gasps, her own eyes shooting open and landing wildly on him. He starts to say something else, but she lunges forward before he can. He tries to hold her, then, to put an arm around her back, but his arm hurts like a _mother_, so he just lies there and basks in the feel of her right there and _alive_ as she peppers kisses across his face. "Oh, Finn, you're okay, you're okay, oh, _Finn_! . . ."

"Wha —?" His throat burns.

She draws back, wiping at her eyes and beaming at him. "We were in an accident," she says. "They took us both into surgery, and I woke a few hours after, and I was fine, but you — oh, Finn, it's been three days. And, oh, goodness, we need to call for the doctor, don't we?" She laughs a little, and she clicks some button on the wall or something. "You're okay," she says again, almost as much to herself as to him. She reaches out to cup his face, and she seems so crazy happy.

He is, too.

And he _still_ doesn't understand, but she's alive, and that's all he really needs to know.

Everything starts to happen quickly after that. A few nurses arrive, and then his mom comes, and she spills her coffee all over the floor as she rushes to him, tears already springing from her eyes. People are talking and telling him to look in this direction and asking him who the president is and to count to ten, and he tries again to ask what's happened. Somebody makes him drink some water. Somebody else shoves something in his ear.

He keeps a hold of Rachel's hand the whole time.

"But — what — what happened?" he asks, so confused.

"Some idiot ran a red light and slammed into Sam's Vovlo," Kurt says, tears in his eyes, even as he smiles at Finn, and Finn isn't sure when Kurt arrived. Puck's here, too, and is that Tina? And Finn kinda suddenly wants them to all leave, 'cause his head is _pounding. _"Rachel was thrown from the car, and you rushed to help her, and before anyone else could get to you both, another car nearly tore right through you, I swear, I've never been so terrified —"

Quinn and Mercedes both burst into the room. "Oh, God, _Finn!" _Quinn cries, hurrying to him, her eyes big and shiny with tears. And Rachel's hand slips from his._ No. _He's alarmed. He doesn't even have a chance to stop her. Quinn leans forward and kisses him softly. "I was so worried," she tells him tearfully.

He tries to see past her, though. Where'd Rachel go? He catches a glimpse of her, catches the soft, small smile she sends him just before she leaves the room, a smile just like she gave him before she drove off with Sam. Where's she going? He _can't_ lose her again.

"Wait," he says, barely audible. He looks around. "No, wait," he says. "Come back!"

"It's all okay, sweetheart," his mom says, smoothing his hair over and using that soothing mom voice. "I know you're confused, but you're alright."

Quinn takes his hand.

"No!" he yells, his lungs stinging with the effort. He couldn't care less about his lungs. He tears his hand from her grasp and tries to push himself out of bed. They all go crazy, talking at once and forcing him back into bed, doctors and nurses and parents and Glee kids and — and — "No!" He shoves them away and swings his legs off the bed. His left wrist's all fucked up, but his legs work fine, he thinks.

"Mr. Hudson, you really ought to stay in bed," a doctor tells him, "at least until —"

He stands. He stumbles slightly, ten bajillion hands reach out to steady him, and he swats them all away. "I gotta go get her," he mumbles, his words still sticking in his throat.

"Finn," Quinn starts, "it's really not good for you to —"

"No!" he shouts, and everybody's finally silent. "I know what's good for me, and I'm gonna get her." He pushes past them and makes it out of that room, and he looks desperately up and down the hospital hall. His mind spins for a minute, and he has to lean against the wall. But he spots her almost instantly, spots her before Kurt can do more than touch a hand to Finn's arm.

Starting towards her, he calls her name. She turns around in surprise. She's on the phone, but he doesn't care. He tugs her to him, hoists her up, and buries his face in her hair. Somebody shouts something at his back, his wrist stings painfully, and her phone drops and skids across the floor, but he just takes a deep breath and squeezes her a little tighter.

"Finn," she whispers gently, her hand hesitantly running over his hair. "What —?"

"Stay with me," he says hoarsely. "You can't leave me again. Stay."

And slowly, gently, she kisses his forehead. "Okay," she finally says. "Okay." He leans against the wall, his eyes flickering closed as he takes a slow breath. His back has begun to _pulse_ with the pain, but he doesn't want to put her down. And he won't. He refuses. "Okay, Finn," she murmurs sweetly. "I'll stay." She strokes his face. "Don't worry.

"I'm not going anywhere."

* * *

><p>It was all a dream. He figures that out pretty fast.<p>

But he needs to talk to Rachel.

He wants to tell her about the dream, and he wants to tell her what he realised. He wants to explain to her everything he explained to the Rachel in his dream. He wants to tell her that he loves her, and that he wants to be with her. He simply wants to _talk_ to her.

He tries a couple of times, but someone always interrupts them.

One by one, though, their friends leave, and soon after they're all gone, Burt convinces Finn's mom to go home with him, telling her that she better sleep for weeks to make up for all the sleep she missed. And Kurt takes a Mr. Berry on each arm and leads them away to the hospital cafeteria, winking at Finn as he goes.

Finn looks over at Rachel. _Finally_, they're alone. She smiles a little at him. "This is all kinda crazy," he says.

"I know," she replies. "But you're okay."

"You are, too," he says, and they stare at each other. "I had the craziest dream, Rachel. I — I lived in this world where you died on prom night, and I jumped through time to try to —"

He falters when a nurse appears in the doorway. She checks Finn's vitals yet again and then makes him promise _not_ to try another run for freedom. He looks over at Rachel, who stares at the ground with this look on her face, like she's desperately trying to make sense of something.

His mom is suddenly back, then, with Burt trailing behind and looking exasperated. She fusses over Finn some more and claims that she can't sleep as long as he's still in the hospital. At the very least, she'll wait for him to fall asleep. "I'm _fine_, Mom," he insists. "And Rachel's here. She can take care of me." He glances at her. But she still has her gaze on the floor, and she looks slightly amazed now, even as a slight smirk plays across her lips.

"But Rachel is still recovering, too," his mom says.

Rachel finally seems to rejoin the world. "Oh, don't worry, Mrs. Hudson-Hummel. I'll take very good care of Finn, and he'll still be here and in even better health when you come to see him tomorrow after a good night's sleep." She smiles brightly.

A few minutes later, Burt leads Finn's mom away again, and Rachel grasps Finn's hand, bright excitement bubbling up in her eyes

"What?" he says.

"You dream," she says. "You jumped through time to try to find a way to save me from dying on prom night, right?"

_What_? How —? He nods slowly, confused. How does she know that?

"And I told you that you couldn't save me, but you tried again and again, and you kidnapped me one morning and you let out the air in Sam's tire, until finally I convinced you not to try anymore, because I had to die, because that was the only way to live, because you couldn't be trapped in time, because —"

"You — _yes, _but — that was real — ?" He doesn't understand. How can she know? Holy shit. _Was_ it real?

"And you told me that you loved me?"

Shocked and a little freaked, he slowly nods again. But — "And you told me you love me, too," he whispers. This doesn't make any sense.

Nodding, she grasps his hand. "I'll start at the beginning. I was thrown from the car," she says, "and knocked nearly unconscious, but I could still feel you come to help me, and then _you_ were hit by a car. They rushed us to the hospital, and I turned out fine, but you — you _died_."

That's not what happened, though. Neither of them died in real life, and in his dream _she_ died. But she goes on, and he listens, and he tries to follow it all.

"I fell asleep crying," she says, "and when I woke up, I was in my bed, like nothing had ever happened. I didn't have a single scratch. And my dress hung in my closet, untouched. I ran downstairs to ask my dads what had happened, and I learned prom wasn't for another week. I even called you, and you picked up, and it was really like nothing had happened.

He can't believe this. Has he fallen into a coma again, or something?

"I went to school on Monday, and it was a pretty normal day. But the next day was Friday. And you acted strangely, like you knew all these things I didn't, and nothing made sense. I started jumping through time. I tried to put all the pieces together, and you helped me after I explained everything to you. I _needed_ your help, because I continually jumped to prom night, and every time, no matter what I did, you died. Every time."

She's squeezing his hand tightly, and she keeps her gaze on him as the words pour out of her. "I figured out how it worked. I figured out the difference between real time and special time. I figured out how to progress through real time. And I figured out that I had to let you die. But I couldn't. I did everything to stop it, week after week. I called the police to warn them of a drunk driver on the road. I poured soda on Quinn's dress so she had to change. I told you everything, and you and I drove out to see a drive-in movie instead of going to prom.

"Again and again, I saved you, but it was never right. Time stood still, and I was trapped in this endless loop. I lived every day a dozen times. And you didn't remember any of it, except the days I lived in real time, but once I lived them, they were finished, and I simply lived in special time, time you didn't remember, time only I knew, and I couldn't move forward because I wouldn't let you die, and. . . ."

She finally pauses, swallowing thickly.

"And then you called me on a random Sunday to ask about _juice_, of all things, and I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out why something had gone differently. I even thought maybe I imagined the phone call. But I came to school the next day, and you came to talk to me at lunch. I couldn't believe it. I was floored. That wasn't how Monday was supposed to go. I knew how Monday was supposed to go, just like I knew how Sunday was supposed to go. I _knew_ both days to a tee. I had the script memorized. I _knew_. And you were going off script.

"Something had changed for the first time in _months_."

He nods a little. "You did seem a little weirded out," he says slowly.

"I know, right? But you mentioned Sam, and that was a conversation I knew, one we were supposed to have in the parking lot that afternoon. I wasn't sure what was happening, but I played along — you remember that indignant speech with Sam?"

"Yeah," he murmurs.

"That was all off a script — a speech I had given you ten times over. But I was pretty convincing, wasn't I? Broadway doesn't stand a chance." She smiles, then, and he only stares. Seriously? Is this actually happening?

"See, I slowly realized that some sort of new reality had begun," she goes on. "And, according to what this new you in this new reality told me, it was a reality in which _I_ died instead of you. I thought maybe it was because for so long I had refused to let time play out the way it was supposed to, and . . . and God was finally saying, 'okay, fine, Rachel, does this work better for you?' And I wasn't sure what to do, and then I realized — that I could never let you die, even if it meant I would be stuck in this place. I was too selfish to let to let you die.

"But I couldn't let you become stuck, too. I decided I had to convince you that it wasn't a life." She pauses.

His mind runs over everything she said, and . . . and holy shit. Holy _fucking_ shit. "We had, like, a merged dream?" he says.

"I think so," she says breathlessly. She bites her lip, staring off into space for a moment, and he can nearly see the wheels turning in her head. Her head snaps suddenly to him, understanding bright in her gaze. "Dr. Zegeer says that I was unconscious for seven minutes, and you were unconscious for two, and we were both resuscitated around the same time and taken in separate ambulances to the hospital, where we went in to surgery."

"Yeah," he says. "But. . . ."

"What if it was those seven minutes?" she whispers. "What if I started in on this world where you died and I refused to let you, so I was stuck in time, and each minute was a few weeks? And then you were knocked unconscious by that second car, and you joined me, and my reality changed, became subsumed by yours, and for two minutes our two subconscious minds joined?"

"That's . . . that's crazy," he says. But it kinda _does_ work, doesn't it?

"Crazier things have happened," she murmurs. "And . . . the first time we slept together in your reality, it was on Thursday, right? In my bed, before my dads came home from work?"

He nods. "And we ditched school on Friday, and we went to the lake?" he asks.

"Yes," she says, "yes. We both imagined that."

This is way too heavy for him.

"So you were there for everything?" he asks. "Every time, I like, re-did a day — you knew what was going on and you remembered the last time I did that day and everything?"

She nods. "That's right."

"What about, like, when I was at your funeral?"

"Well, I wasn't there for _that_. It would have been rather cruel of our joined sub- consciousnesses to make me lie in a coffin all day, wouldn't it have been?" She looks rather pleased now, like this is so amazing. And it is. _God_. It wasn't real, it was all a dream he had in only two _minutes_, yet it was real, 'cause she lived it all, too. He thinks over every conversation they had.

"Wait, but how did you know all this stuff whenever I didn't, if you jumped around with me?"

She shakes her head. "I didn't jump around with you. I lived the days in order. I had to live Monday three times until you got it right. and I had to live Tuesday two days. It went like that. By the third time I lived through Monday, I finally knew what was happening. And, of course, you explained everything to me that night. It still took a little while for me to realize that you were jumping around randomly like I had once done and not just doing the same day over and over until you progressed like I was doing now — if that makes sense."

It sort of does. Still, his mind is kinda blown. "This is really confusing," he says. He frowns. "Since I made it all up in my head, shouldn't it be easier to understand?

"The capacity of our unconscious minds is astounding," she replies. "I mean, I've never been able to explain my sixth sense."

"Yeah." He runs a hand through his hair. "So, like, how many times did you pull out scripts on me? Like, how many conversations did we have when I was bouncing around time that you'd already had?"

"Oh, several." She leans back in her seat. "I'm a wonderful actress. I had to be very careful if I intended to convince you to let me die. I had to take my time." She smiles proudly.

"So you couldn't let me die, but you were gonna make me let you die?" he asks. That's not fair.

"It wasn't about dying," she says softly. She reaches out and touches his cheek. "It was about living. I couldn't let you die, even if I meant I wouldn't really live. But I could never let you not really live, trapped like I was."

And, maybe it's weird, but he really understands that, at least. "Do you think," he starts, "do you think we woke up 'cause we both finally let each other die, or whatever?" he asks.

"I honestly don't know," she says. "I guess it doesn't matter." He nods. It's quiet for a little while. He tries to run all the scenes through his head yet again, tries to remember every moment he lived where she might have acted funny, and then he goes through everything she told him, and —

"Wait, hold on," he says. She glances away from the window to meet his gaze. "You lived for, like, months in dream time before I joined in, right?"

"Yes," she says, nodding.

"And, like, just now you said the first time we had sex in _my_ reality, it was on a Thursday," he says. "Does that mean we had sex in your reality, too?" He blushes a little, but he can't help asking. She blushes, too, biting her lip, and nods. "But it was still your first time when we had sex on Thursday. . . ."

"It was a new reality, different from mine," she says. "And, besides, I lost my virginity to you several times in various ways in the special time of my reality — time lost all continuance, remember."

"Oh." But what does several times mean? "How many times?" he asks, just 'cause, you know, he's curious, or whatever.

She starts to count on her fingers, pauses, and then — "Seventeen times. And don't worry — you took my virginity very lovingly all seventeen times." She pats his hand, and he just stares at her in disbelief. She laughs a little. "Honestly," she goes on quietly, "I think the first time we have here, outside our minds, will be better than all those times." She smiles softly at him.

He thinks it will be, too. But does this mean —? They both experienced everything in those two minutes, and they both remember all those conversations, and does —? "Does this mean — are we — are we _us_ again?" he asks.

She takes his hands in hers. "Finn, we were never not us. We've been us since the day we met. We're simply the _good_ kind of us again."

"Yeah?"

"Definitely."

"I love you," he says, because he really can't think of any words that fit better.

And she smiles slowly and widely. "You have no idea."

* * *

><p>Everyone in Glee claps when Finn and Rachel return a week later.<p>

Regionals is in less than two weeks, and school lets out two weeks after that. They probably won't have any success at Regionals, not with everything that's happened, but Finn doesn't really care. "And there's always next year," Mercedes says, smiling happily at Rachel.

"We could totally still kick ass this year," Puck says.

"And, on that note," Mr. Schue says, "why don't we get started?"

Nobody pays him any mind.

"Did you have any cool dreams?" Mike asks Finn. "Like, coma dreams?"

Finn and Rachel glance at each other. They had decided not to tell anyone what happened. It's theirs, and theirs alone, and he kind of likes that. Besides, no one has asked why they're together again. Apparently, nobody's surprised. Finn talked with Quinn, too, and explained that they were never really good for each other. She took it pretty well, actually.

"Nah," Finn says, answering Mike. "Not really."

"What about you, Rachel?" Artie asks. "Did you at least have a Britney Spears fantasy?"

"Or maybe a Barbra Streisand one?" Mercedes asks, grinning.

"Actually," Rachel says, "I did have a very nice fantasy. It was of me and Finn, together and happily in love."

"Did you do that lame thing where you hold hands and dance around a piano?" Lauren asks. "Because that's really not all that great. Trust me."

Rachel only smiles and leans into Finn.

"God, you two are boring," Santana says, "even in _dreams_._"_

"Yeah," Finn says, "I guess so."

**Fin.**

_Out where the dreams all hide,_

_Out where the wind don't blow,_

_Out here, the good girls die._

_Now, Cinderella, don't you go to sleep._

_It's such a bitter form of refuge._

_Why don't you know, the kingdom's under siege,_

_And everybody needs you. . . ._

* * *

><p>an: too much of a cop-out? I just don't do unhappy endings! How about too crazy? It was originally a much simpler plot that I started after "Comeback," but the more I wrote, the more complicated it became, and it may have turned into a kind of monster. . . . Please review? :)_  
><em>


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